an Excerpt from The SONG OF THE FOREST by COLIN MACKAY
Current mood: hopeful
Category: Writing and Poetry

A tale told in the bothies . A tale of the long nights of winter-- but one that was never told in the hearing of any priest.
  Once upon a time the Moon fell into the earth .This was after the mountains had been created, and the seas,and the straths, and the forests, but there were no men or women. This the folk on the bothies said , was how men and women had come into the world.
  It was the Bog King who caused it. When the straths were made, many wee glens were made with them, and the water from the mountain burns got trapped in some of these glens and became stagnant,and the earth there became soft and the two  blended together  water and earth , and so the bogs were made,and the Green Bog King sat at the bottom under the reeds and the mud and the sticky green slime, and ruled it all ,and the bogs became full of ghoulies and bogles and dead things and horrors that crept in the night . The all  walking creatures learned to fear the bogs, because whenever a fawn or a boar , a badger or a cuddie, or even the harmless little hedgehog entered them in dark moonless nights,  the bogles would rise up  wailing out of their holes and the wisp lights wuold flicker , and the slimy hands of of all the dead horrors beneath the mud would grasp at the poor creatures legs, and pull it screaming piteously down into  the terrible death that waited grinning in the Bog Kings court.
 Now the sun was distant and wouldn't stir himself for the sake of the animal-kind , but when the moon heard of all the evil that was going on in bogland whenever her back was turned, she decided to go down herself and see what could be done. So she covered her shining body  with a dark cloak, and pulled a hood over her gleaming hair, and entered the bogland, stepping easily  from tussock to tussock  by the light of her white feet; and whenever  the ghoulies and bogles came wailing and gnashing at her, or the horrors and the dead things rose and scrabbled at her  with their cold fingers, she threw back her hood and the light of her beautiful face flooded the whole country side, and the dead things fled shrieking away.

But it was a huge bog,and the squelching mud seemed to stretch away for ever and ever, and at length  the Moon began to weary of picking her way across it. So she sat down to rest on the trunk of an old tree that was lying half submerged in the ooze. She sat back  thankfully and rested her feet on one branch and laid her head on another . Then the tree began to move! Aaah
 but it wasnt a tree at all ! No, it was the Bog King himself lying basking there like a hippopotamus in the slime , and the two branches were his arms . He grabbed her feet in one hand and threw the other round her neck and struggle  thought she might the Moon couldn't get free. Then the Bog King drew her down, down into the clart,  down under the peat and under the very  roots of the reeds; down into his own dark kingdom, and a black bubble or two  burst on the surface , and the Moon was gone.
 
    I need hardly  tell you how great was the rejoicing among the bogles when they realised  that their hated enemy was gone, and that every night would now be a black night with only the faintest starfire from heaven to watch their evil doings. They jumped and skirled and  screeched with joy. They made the very  branches of the forest dirl and ding with their clamour.
The grew bolder in their forays from the bog; they crept by night over the moorland tearing and butchering any living creature they met; and the owls and the eagles and the ravens perched higher and higher on the branches for safety; and the squirrels and the badgers  burrowed deeper, and the deer and the boars, the otters and the beavers, even the smallest beasties, the very beetles glow-worms and spiders retreated further and further yet from the marches of the bogland,and darkness and death were on the face of the world.
   Then Goban the creator stamped his hoof, and the trees, the real trees of Scotland  began to talk and move. In the wind their leaves  whistled to each other; in the still their bodies creaked and groaned tree language.Where is the Moon? they asked. The swiveled their heads, turning from side to side. Where is she? The sent out their leaves  in the days the world would later know as autumn, Find her! they said to the leaves, and the leaves went fluttering and  whistling across the straths. The birds took to the air, the burrowers took to the earth, and the fish  plummeted the lochbeds;  the all sought her. But the Moon was nowhere to be found.
 Beside the bog grew a small hawthorn tree. She was so close to the bog and so small that the bogland folk had forgotten all about her. Well the hawthorn held her wheesht until all the other trees had had their say .Then she piped up . "Ahem folks, I think that maybe I just might ken where our Moon is " though she had to repeat her self several times before they all heard her. Where ?? said the rowan Where? said the birch, Where? said the yew and the pine,  the fir and the alder. Where? rumbled the old oak, last of all. And so  hawthorn told them how she had seen the Bog King pull the Moon down below the surface. When they heard this, the trees marched in a great mass-- yes the entire forest moved--down the mountain slopes and along the straths until they had surrounded the bog on all sides. Then they sank their roots down under the reeds and into the slime and mud until they found the hall of the Bog King, and began knocking on his roof. Ar first it was a gentle tap,and then louder, then louder still, until it sounded as though thunder had sunk under the earth in pursuit of the vanished Moon, so loud did thar hammer sound.
 And that is exactly what the Bog King thought it was.
   "Who's that banging on my  roof he called and the pine answered "Me GUITHAIS, with the thunder in  my roots wanting out Moon" "Away to hell," said the Bog King, and laughed.
   "Who's that thumping in my loft, he shouted next, and the Alder replied , Me FEARN , with the thunder in my roots wanting our Moon"  "Ach away and boil your heid", grumbled the Bog King.
    "Who's that skirling down my lun ?" he growled a while later , and the oak said  Me DARACH, with the thunder in my  roots wanting our Moon "
      And then the Bog King fearing that the roof and walls were going to fall in about his lugs, broke the twining chains that held the Moon, and the trees saw the strange beautiful face of their lost Moon rising up through the foul waters of the bog, and a moment later she was shining down on them again from heaven, and all the bogles and ghoulies and dead things fled shrieking away . But from that day to this the Moons face is pitted with dark shadows whenever she remembers her stay in the Bog Kings hall.

Now the Moon had twin bairns by the Bog King , and the laddie's name was Nechtan, and the lassies name was Mongfinn, and they were bonny  to look on, but as they were made in part of the cold black mud of the bog,they could not fly up to heaven with their mother . So they stayed right here on middle earth, in  this world of ours, and whiles they would look up to heaven to see their mothers shining face, and whiles they would look down below into their fathers darkness; and they were the first humans, because they were tall and and slender and supple as young trees, but their roots were not anchored so deep in their earth ,nor were their heads held so high to heaven; and they had legs like the deer, and eyes like the hawk, and a throat like the song birds, and an appetite like the wolf, and pride like the the eagle,and cunning like the fox.
   That was how man and woman first came into the world, they said in the evening in the peat firelight.
 
 Well grass grows and water flows, folk lust and one day Mongfinn was heavy with her brother's child. A boy it was; but looking at the wee squalling thing with the pride and joy  that all parents  have felt since,
  Mongfinn and Nechtan had a sort of premonition that things were not as they should be. And as there was this shadow lying over them which they couldn't understand or explain in any  way that is what they called the bairn . Shadow, because he had come between them like a shadow in the night.

The mountains were still moving in those days, the thunder giants still rolled boulders for sport, and cast great slabs of warm rock at each other across yawning ravines. One bright forenoon when the rainbow was standing high among the clouds and the water was dripping from the heather flowers,a hundred and more young firs fell to their knees and bowed themselves  like young novices,and when the earth closed again it closed around their topmost branches and all below was gone back into the earth once more, tree and leaf, squirrel and nest, and Mongfinn and her  Nechtan who walked no more in the light of the world.
   What became of the son? Human, he had the appetite of a wolf, and the wolf folk found him hunting. Strangely enough they didnt kill him, because they  thought he was a wolf, so they raised him as one of their own, a young wolf cub.
   Shadow grew strong and forest wise and stealthy. He killed for food,and he killed for pleasure too; but then sometimes a feyness wuold come on him, and he would take a scunner to himself and his bloody hands and his dripping jaws and then he would wander away into the solitude, awau from the blood and the stink of blood, and talk gently  to the trees and beasts,and while he would press his face into the soft moss round the tree  roots and weep. Then the forest folk  looked at him and wondered.
   All except the corbie. The corbie is a wise bird, and understood things better left unspoken. One day, as Shadow walked disconsolately beneath the branches, the black corbie perched above his head and spoke to him. "Shadow , Shadow, what makes you so sad?" And  Shadow answered her " O It's all alone I am sister and no one to share the burden of life with me "
   So the corbie spoke to him again and told him to go to certain birch tree,and to take the tree and to make from it a woman of white wood, and  Shadow did so; and because her body was white as the heartwood of the tree, and because her hair was fair as the shoots of it, he called her Bas Barra Geal , which is Princess Bright Palm; and from their loving line the folk of he Scotland and of all the world are descended.
 

6:43 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Dreams Shared

What if you slept?
And what if,
in your sleep
you dreamed?
And what if,
in your dream,
you went to heaven
and there plucked
a strange and
beautiful flower?
And what if,
when you awoke,
you had the flower
in your hand?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

7:52 PM - 6 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

Poetry
Current mood: content
Category: Writing and Poetry

From the beginning of my life
I have been looking for your face
but today I have seen it.

Today I have seen
the charm, the beauty,
the unfathomable grace
of the face
that I was looking for.

Today I have found you
and those that laughed
and scorned me yesterday
are sorry that they were not looking
as I did.

I am bewildered by the magnificence
of your beauty
and wish to see you with a hundred eyes.

My heart has burned with passion
and has searched forever
for this wondrous beauty
that I now behold.

I am ashamed
to call this love human
and afraid of God
to call it divine.

Your fragrant breath
like the morning breeze
has come to the stillness of the garden
You have breathed new life into me
I have become your sunshine
and also your shadow.

My soul is screaming in ecstasy
Every fiber of my being
is in love with you

Your effulgence
has lit a fire in my heart
and you have made radiant
for me
the earth and sky.

My arrow of love
has arrived at the target
I am in the house of mercy
and my heart
is a place of prayer.

~Rumi

12:30 PM - 1 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

How Quantum Physics Proves the Existence of the Soul
Current mood: contemplative
Category: Religion and Philosophy

The Spiritual Universe
How Quantum Physics Proves the Existence of the Soul
An Interview with author Fred Alan Wolf
By Julie Knowles

In The Spiritual Universe, Fred Alan Wolf explores the existence of the soul from the standpoint of a scientist. He reveals why he believes the mind/body question so central to spiritual philosophy is illuminated by the discoveries of modern theoretical physics. In this interview Fred addresses his theories in particular, but also the eternal mysteries of humankind: matter, soul, spirit, self, and consciousness.

JK: What led you in this direction - away from the traditional methodology of your scientific training and towards a more integrative exploration of the universe?
FAW: This book is not as much of a divergence from the path I have been following as it would be for a physicist who hadn't been researching areas of my interest. My path has been moving steadily away from what might be described as traditional physics, although even that field is changing as to what is considered to be traditional and non-traditional.
The whole spectrum of what it is to be a human being interests me and my training in physics has led me to alternative ways of looking at these concepts. My particular interest has been the subject of consciousness: What is consciousness?Is it something physical? Is it a field? Does it have any aspects to it that are related to the physical? Does it involve only human brains and human minds? If it does involve the mind, what is a mind? Are these things that can be talked about from the point of view of science- physics in particular - or are these concepts which have to remain nebulous and ill-defined for all eternity?
The questions that I'm asking and attempting to make models for are really the same questions the ancient philosophers (the Greeks for example) attempted to answer. Their models, like mine, were based on their understanding of the way the world, the universe, and the laws of science worked.
In a modern sense, I'm a throwback because the aim of modern science has been to divide, separate, and look at things in greater detail with a well-designed microscope that, despite its depth of detail, leaves out a lot of things in its probing. In the attempts to define things so microscopically, I think we've "thrown out the baby with the bath water." We've dismissed things, or narrowed our focus to such a degree, that we've reached a point where we aren't seeing what we were originally looking for. So, in some ways we need to step back to a more classical approach and I think that's what I've attempted in my book the Spiritual Universe. I'm looking at some of the deeper philosophical questions such as, "What is the soul?"

JK: Who has significantly influenced your work? Who are the people who have really affected you?

FAW: There have been a number of people who have been teachers for me, not necessarily because I followed along in their direction, but because they inspired me to move in my own direction. In the scientific field there were basically two physicists who were inspiring to me. David Bohm was a physicist I knew reasonably well and who was a great inspiration because I was able to spend time and interact with him. He would talk to me about his ideas and theories and those discussions rubbed off on me.
The other was Richard Feynman who taught a course of lectures at the company where I worked. Just being able to be in his class, I saw an original mind at work. He was very intuitive, he was funny, brash, and not at all what I expected a physicist to be - this man was alive. Whenever I heard a lecture of his it always inspired something new in my thinking.
People I never have known, but whose work I have read, also influenced me. Albert Einstein, for example, certainly influenced me primarily because of his humility, his humanitarianism, and his outstanding and major break with traditional science when he did his original work. He opened up a vision of physics outside the ordinary world and yet there was a "shining-ness" to his truth in the theory of relativity; his discussion of the behavior of light was very exciting. Later on, there were the writings of Erwin Schroedinger who was the father-figure for quantum mechanics and who is still an inspiration to me, as well as Werner Heisenberg.
Spiritually, I have been influenced to a large extent by Buddhist thinking and those who expound the Buddhist way. I find them quite delightful and it is interesting that a lot of physicists seem to follow Buddhist principles, which is perhaps, not so surprising after all.
I have also been influenced by Jung and Freud. Although they went in very different directions, I found something original in their thinking that was exciting to me.

JK: The Buddha, of course, did not believe in the existence of the soul.

FAW: Yes, that's right. The Buddha had a remarkable ability to see what there is to see and to deal with what's it there. That made his approach to the spiritual or to the human problem of existence very refreshing. This is very similar to what a scientist does. We try to drop all assumptions about the way things should be, and deal with things the way they are. Although that's not always possible to do, it nevertheless is the basis of Buddhist thought.

JK: What are your definitions of soul, spirit, matter, self, and consciousness - the primary concepts discussed in this book? And, can you explain the relationships between them?

FAW: To begin with, I want to emphasize that as the ancient philosophers did, I use metaphors as models that are based on my understanding of how the physical world works. Using metaphors allows me to explain things that are unfamiliar, in terms that are familiar, at least to me.
-For example, almost all of these concepts- soul, matter, self, spirit, and consciousness can be defined by conceiving of two basic objects. One is a vibrating string as you might see on a violin, and the other is a mirror which reflects back images of the "real" world. In my models, both are placed in the context of quantum theories.
-Spirit would be akin to the vibrations of the string, and to make it more applicable, we imagine the string to be infinitely long and shimmering or vibrating, due to the random input of heat, air, or just the vacuum of space itself, randomly fluctuating. This vibrating is the movement of the spirit.
-This constant movement, energy, or life, is the modus operandi of the string, or spirit. In modern science this notion of a vibrating string is located in the vacuum of empty space. Physicists understand that we can model the vacuum as if it were filled with these vibrating strings and thus the vacuum itself becomes vibratory and is a natural place to look for spirit.
-The soul is the reflected vibrations of the vacuum within the domain of time. Time (and the soul) extends from the beginning and ending points of time, known respectively as the Big Bang and the Big Crunch. The soul reflects from these vibrations just as an image is reflected from a mirror, and the soul embodiment in the material substrata is what I call "self," or the "selfprocess." The soul has to relate to itself continually in the body and therefore its basic concerns are with the survival of the body, or our material nature. The soul isn't necessarily embodied to begin with, but the self is.
-What is consciousness? Consciousness occurs when there is a reflection. What is being reflected depends on the form of the consciousness. If we're talking about primal reflections from the beginning and ending of time, then the reflection produces a conscious soul. When reflections are from points in space, then those become essentially unconscious pieces of matter.
-The self, because it is a reflection of something that is conscious (the soul) in matter which is unconscious, has both elements. So, the self is both conscious and unconscious. This then, offers a model for what we mean by consciousness and unconsciousness in that there is a consciousness reflecting off an unconscious material.
-What makes the description of these things difficult is that they are alive and processing - they are not static objects. The self is not static. It is ever-changing and reflects something deeper that is the soul. The self is always embodied or contained. It is always a reflection of the soul that is in the body itself. So, the challenge we face is to define the processes, rather than the entities themselves.

JK: Can you explain the theory that you just referred to, that the universe as we know it, exists in a vacuum?

FAW: It's truly remarkable. There was a great philosopher and scientist whose name was Arthur Eddington and he gave us a model to understand this concept. As Arthur pointed out: here I am, sitting at a table, writing this paper. However, when I describe this "real" table in the language of science as I understand it, it is a ghost; in fact it is made of atoms that are themselves mostly empty space.
-If you look at an object the size of the nucleus of an atom and compare it to the whole of an atom, one finds it to be one part in a hundred million billion or something ridiculously small like that. So the universe which is made up of atoms is mostly a vacuum: it's mostly empty. There's hardly anything here in terms of what we call the material world!
-When you understand this concept, it radically alters your perspective of the universe and in fact, the vacuum or empty space that never goes away, becomes just about the only thing that is tangible and real when you take the Eddington point of view.

JK: You also talk about the soul wanting to manifest itself in matter, which creates an ongoing tension that the self perceives as desire.

FAW: Yes. The process is like this: There is undifferentiated spirit which is both conscious and unconscious. In order to become conscious it has to reflect, and that creates time. Further reflections in space form matter, so now we have space, time, and matter. Once that happens, there seems to be a desire to come out of time into space... that would be manifestation. So, coming out of pure action into something inert, there is something that stops the action: a resistance. There seems to be a need to create the resistance to oneself, which is desire.
-The Qabalists speak about this frequently-that resistance is necessary for life. The resistance is necessary for spirit to know itself, so to speak. It's like the myth of Narcissus, or the myths of the dog with the bone in its mouth looking down into the river and seeing a bigger bone. Somehow, once there is a means by which a reflection can occur, there is a desire that arises. Maybe that's the fundamental spark of desire.
-It could be a desire that we all have for each other, or to be in love, or the basic sexual desire that's the fundamental energy. Basically, each of us desires, because we want to express love with ourselves. We don't desire the other, what we really desire is a true connection to ourselves and we believe we see that in the other. I think that's what falling in love means. It's a falling out of the vacuum into the material.

JK: Rumi described his desire as "rising in love."

FAW: Now that's different. Rising in love would be compassion. The desire to rise in love is very different that the desire to fall in love because there is an association with falling in love of satisfying the sense of the body; whereas, rising in love is almost a renunciation of that need to satisfy the senses.

JK: If humans are consciously developing self-reflective awareness and the responsibility that inevitably goes with that, how do you see our role in the evolution of consciousness and human development?

FAW: It seems evident to me, and maybe it will become more evident to others, that consciousness and matter are not in such separate camps as a lot of people used to think. It was popularly thought that mind deals with mind things - thoughts, feelings and so forth - and that body deals with physiological things, and that there is virtually no communication between the two.
-Now, particularly after some of the research I did for The Spiritual Universe, it seems to me that knowledge can be envisioned as embodied. Not in the metaphorical sense, but literally embodied in the material sense. Knowledge can alter and change the biology and physical structure of the thing that has that knowledge. How that knowledge is expressed can really change the body. In other words, there is the possibility that we can alter and change ourselves by how and what we learn, how and what we inform ourselves with, and what we do with that information.
-If you ask me how do I do that - can I make myself float off the ground, or turn a cloud into rain - that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is how thinking can affect the nervous system of the body and the brain.
-For me, taking some of the responsibility for that means being as open and as truthful about what I know as possible. I think that if people were more open and truthful, and if others did not react through violence to what another person expresses, we could learn a lot more from each other. We could become more human than we have been up to this point.
-So, responsibility seems to me that those of us who have this expanded awareness just have to continue developing, writing, speaking, and being with people - recognizing that your presence, your words, and your attitudes do more than just express yourself or your mind, but affect mind overall. I think that's enough.




Julie Knowles is a masters degree candidate at John F. Kennedy University's Consciousness Studies program, with a concentration in Dream Studies, and a certificate candidate in Conflict Resolution.
email: shawn@eyerarts.com
TranspersonalWeb is designed by EyerArts. Copyright © 1996 by Shawn Eyer.
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MY OWN COMMMENTS

  Finding  this  is NON coincidence for me .... in that I have been giving a great deal of thought to the compartmentalization- separation of pieces of ourselves ... we put "business" in a box over there and family in another and religion in yet another .. and while we all despise those sunday morning righteous people who do their spiritual thing on sunday and forget it the rest of the week and perpetrate war or business ruthless without human values (  thereby making business their true god )the rest of the week , some of us still preach keeping other things " separate ", when in a greater sense we know this to be an impossiblity . Medicine ( true medicine the art of healing not the health care business ) has known for a long time that the wholistic approach is the basis for accomplishing healing and that all parts of the body are connected, and that one cannot remove ones foot without affecting the entire being , and allowing time and space for that being to be human and express themselves fully . We cannot lie to our souls , or  separate pieces of  them , without consequences to ourselves .
Compartmentalization, in self in  society and culture   is a concept that we are slowly evolving beyond , connectedness and living our lives KNOWING that we are all integrally connected is the future forward , all the while celebrating the diversity and variety  that life itself  is .

Love and HUGS
Swannie

7:25 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Independence , Art, and Fireflies
Current mood: contemplative
Category: Religion and Philosophy

Independence , Art, and Fireflies

 Long ago and far away, I once read  something about "art"; written by a want to be  artist. They expounded upon how they  produce  "art" by  disconnecting themselves completely  from their work, and then and only then  they know they  have achieved "art". It impressed me at the time as misguided .

  In my own finite experience ; any work produced by  a creator is a portion of their heart mind or soul , even if what comes through  them originates in a source unkown .Can  creation  truly be be produced independently of the artist.? Closer to the truth,  I think, is that a creation is an articulation of, internal organs; spiritual anatomy, or even quantum structure , of the artist, and their interaction with the universe. If only  briefly  touched by its passage through ,a creation in some  phenomenal way  takes of that artist. And it seems to me, great art takes a great or greater  portion. Art  touches the creator and changes them; or touches the world and changes it. Great art creates greater and more profound  changes .
 
 In that sense Art is not independent of the artist ;but an inherent function.  Curiously, art itself cannot be other than independent.
 
  The creative process cannot be controlled , stifled, contained, checked, choked, or extinguished. Even in the most repressive of circumstances ,creation emerges. No restriction  of independence prevents or completely prohibits the creative force.. but like the material of the cosmos ; gathers itself and seeks a new avenue for conception. So,on the day of   " Independence"  and every  other day as well ,  in this portion of earth anatomy... I celebrate the inherent inseparable conjunction  of art and artist ...at the same time celebrating the  ne plus  ultra irrepressible independence of creation itself.

  and fireflies who  restore my  integrity and  faith in magic ...
  
 Love and HUGS
   Swannie

Currently reading : The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu By Debra DeSalvo Release date: January, 2006

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Chinese Prose ,Poetry , and Proverbs
Current mood: peaceful
Category: Writing and Poetry

WATERFALL AT LU-SHAN

Sunlight streams on the river stones.
From high above, the river steadily plunges ---

three thousand feet of sparkling water ---
the Milky Way pouring down from heaven.

  Li T'ai-po
  tr. Hamill

The rose has thorns only for those who would gather it

"The tongue like a sharp knife...Kills without drawing blood."

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.

Not the fastest horse can catch a word spoken in anger.

SONG OF THE FORGE

The forge-fire sets a glow in the heavens,
the hammer thunders, showering the smoke with sparks.

A ruddy smithy, the white face of the moon,
and the hammer, ringing down cold dark canyons.

  Li T'ai-po

You held my lotus blossom
In your lips and played with the
Pistil. We took one piece of
Magic rhinoceros horn
And could not sleep all night long.
All night the cocks gorgeous crest
Stood erect. All night the bee
Clung trembling to the flower
Stamens. Oh my sweet perfumed
Jewel! I will allow only
My lord to possess my sacred
Lotus pond, and every night
You can make blossom in me
Flowers of fire.

WRITTEN IN THE SUNSET
Time is engraved on the pale green faces
Of the floating lotus leaves.
Our hearts are a sea, a lake,
Finally a little pond, where
Spider webs interlock over the round leaves,
And below them our longing
Is only a single drop of dew.

Sometimes, suddenly the old story overcomes us.
Time triumphs then.
And lets down its hair
Shadowy black,
Trailing like a willow.

The old melancholy
Comes from the land of longing.
The colors of the sunset thicken.
The shadows grow fast on the water.
You can tear them,
But not tear them away.

Green Mountain
You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.

Parting
A wind, bringing willow-cotton, sweetens the shop,
And a girl from Wu, pouring wine, urges me to share it.
With my comrades of the city who are here to see me off;
And as each of them drains his cup, I say to him in parting,
Oh, go and ask this river running to the east
If it can travel farther than a friend's love!

Spring Night in Lo-yang Hearing a Flute
In what house, the jade flute that sends these dark notes drifting,
scattering on the spring wind that fills Lo-yang?
Tonight if we should hear the willow-breaking song,
who could help but long for the gardens of home?

One lotus flower is like a complete world. The lotus leaf is like a great Buddha.

Lotus flowers grow in shallow water. Each stem of a lotus flower has 4 main parts: flower, leaf, root and seeds. Lotuses blossom in white, pink, red and sometimes yellow. Lotus leaves are big and round like elephant ears. Lotus roots grow in sections and they are as great as a fruit or vegetable. Lotus seeds grow in lotus cupules and are green. The lotus seeds must be peeled before eating. The heart in a lotus seed tastes bitter but is cool in nature. It has a calming nature and can be used for tea or herbal medicine.

Lotus flowers are beautiful, fragrant, and edible. The most precious characteristic of Lotus flowers is that they grow out of the mud yet remain pure and unpolluted by it. They are called the true gentlemen of flowers. It is why countless generations of Chinese poets and painters are attracted to lotus flowers. Poems about lotus flowers started to appear in China three or four thousand years ago. Legend has it that the Western Paradise of Ultimate Bliss is filled with lotus flowers whose majestic beauty cannot be described in words.

Currently reading : The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu By Debra DeSalvo Release date: January, 2006

10:55 PM - 2 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

A World of Sound * Olaf Stapledon

A World of Sound

By Olaf Stapledon

1936


THE ROOM WAS OVERCROWDED AND STUFFY. THE music seemed to have no intelligible form. It was a mere jungle of noise. Now one instrument and now another blared out half a tune, but every one of these abortive musical creatures was killed before it had found its legs. Some other and hostile beast fell upon it and devoured it, or the whole jungle suffocated it.

The strain of following this struggle for existence wearied me. I closed my eyes, and must have fallen asleep; for suddenly I woke with a start. Or seemed to wake. Something queer had happened. The music was still going on, but I was paralysed. I could not open my eyes. I could not shout for help. I could not move my body, nor feel it. I had no body.

Something had happened to the music, too, and to my hearing. But what? The tissue of sounds seemed to have become incomparably more voluminous and involved. I am not musical; but suddenly I realized that this music had overflowed, so to speak, into all the intervals between the normal semitones, that it was using not merely quarter-tones but "centitones" and "millitones," with an effect that would surely have been a torture to the normal ear. To me, in my changed state, it gave a sense of richness, solidity, and vitality quite lacking in ordinary music. This queer music, moreover, had another source of wealth. It reached up and down over scores of octaves beyond the range of normal hearing. Yet I could hear it.

As I listened, I grew surprisingly accustomed to this new jargon. I found myself easily distinguishing all sorts of coherent musical forms in this world of sound. Against an obscure, exotic background of more or less constant chords and fluttering "leafage," so to speak, several prominent and ever-changing sound-figures were playing. Each was a persistent musical object, though fluctuating in detail of gesture and sometimes ranging bodily up or down the scale.

Suddenly I made a discovery which should have been incredible, yet it seemed to me at the time quite familiar and obvious. I found myself recognizing that these active sound-figures were alive, even intelligent. In the normal world, living things are perceived as changing patterns of visible and tangible characters. In this mad world, which was coming to seem to me quite homely, patterns not of colour and shape but of sound formed the perceptible bodies of living things. When it occurred to me that I had fallen into a land of "program music" I was momentarily disgusted. Here was a whole world that violated the true canons of musical art! Then I reminded myself that this music was not merely telling but actually living its story. In fact it was not art but life. So I gave rein to my interest.

Observing these creatures that disported themselves before me, I discovered, or rather rediscovered, that though this world had no true space, such as we perceive by sight and touch, yet it did have a sort of space. For in some sense these living things were moving in relation to me and in relation to one another. Apparently the "space" of this world consisted of two dimensions only, and these differed completely in quality. One was the obvious dimension of tonality, or pitch, on the subtle "keyboard" of this world. The other was perceived only indirectly. It corresponded to the heard nearness or remoteness of one and the same instrument in the normal world. Just as we see things as near and far through the signification of colour and perspective, so in this strange world, certain characters of timbre, of harmonics, of overtones, conveyed a sense of "nearness"; others a sense of "distance." A peculiar blatancy, often combined with loudness, meant "near"; a certain flatness, or ghostliness of timbre, generally combined with faintness, meant "far." An object receding in this "level" dimension (as I called it) would gradually lose its full-bodied timbre, and its detail and preciseness. At the same time it would become fainter, and at last inaudible.

I should add that each sound-object had also its own characteristic timbre, almost as though each thing in this world were a theme played by one and the same instrument. But I soon discovered that in the case of living things the timbre-range of each individual was very wide; for emotional changes might be accompanied by changes of timbre even greater than those which distinguish our instruments.

In contrast with the variegated but almost changeless background or landscape, the living things were in constant movement. Always preserving their individuality, their basic identity of tonal pattern, they would withdraw or approach in the "level" dimension or run up and down the scale. They also indulged in a ceaseless rippling play of musical gesture. Very often one of these creatures, travelling up or down the scale, would encounter another. Then either the two would simply interpenetrate and cross one another, as transverse trains of waves on a pond; or there would be some sort of mutual readjustment of form, apparently so as to enable them to squeeze past one another without "collision." And collision in this world seemed to be much like dissonance in our music. Sometimes, to avoid collision, a creature needed merely to effect a slight alteration in its tonal form, but sometimes it had to move far aside, so to speak, in the other dimension, which I have called the "level" dimension. Thus it became for a while inaudible.

Another discovery now flashed upon me, again with curious familiarity. I myself had a "body" in this world. This was the "nearest" of all the sound-objects. It was so "near" and so obvious that I never noticed it till it was brought into action. This happened unexpectedly. One of the moving creatures inadvertently came into collision with a minor part of my musical body. The slight violation of my substance stabbed me with a little sharp pain. Immediately, by reflex action and then purposefully, I readjusted my musical shape, so as to avoid further conflict. Thus it was that I discovered or rediscovered the power of voluntary action in this world.

I also emitted a loud coruscation of musical gesture, which I at once knew to be significant speech. In fact I said in the language of that world, "Damn you, that's my toe, that was." There came from the other an answering and apologetic murmur.

A newcomer now approached from the silent distance to join my frolicking companions. This being was extremely attractive to me, and poignantly familiar. Her lithe figure, her lyrical yet faintly satirical movement, turned the jungle into Arcadia. To my delight I found that I was not unknown to her, and not wholly unpleasing. With a gay gesture she beckoned me into the game.

For the first time I not only changed the posture of my musical limbs but moved bodily, both in the dimension of pitch and the "level" dimension. As soon as I approached, she slipped with laughter away from me. I followed her; but very soon she vanished into the jungle and into the remoteness of silence. Naturally I determined to pursue her. I could no longer live without her. And in the exquisite harmony of our two natures I imagined wonderful creative potentialities.

Let me explain briefly the method and experience of locomotion in this world. I found that, by reaching out a musical limb and knitting its extremity into the sound-pattern of some fixed object at a distance, in either dimension or both, I obtained a purchase on the object, and could draw my whole body toward it. I could then reach out another limb to a still farther point. Thus I was able to climb about the forest of sound with the speed and accuracy of a gibbon. Whenever I moved, in either dimension, I experienced my movement merely as a contrary movement of the world around me. Near objects became nearer, or less near; remote objects became less remote, or slipped further into the distance and vanished. Similarly my movement up or down the musical scale appeared to me as a deepening or heightening of the pitch of all other objects.

In locomotion I experienced no resistance from other objects save in the collision of dissonance, which I could generally avoid by altering my shape. I discovered that a certain degree of dissonance between myself and another offered only very slight resistance and no pain. Indeed, such contacts might be pleasurable. But harsh discords were a torture and could not be maintained.

I soon found that there was a limit to my possible movement up and down the scale. At a point many octaves below my normal situation I began to feel oppressed and sluggish. As I toiled downwards my discomfort increased, until, in a sort of swoon, I floated up again to my native musical plane. Ascending far above this plane, I felt at first exhilaration; but after many octaves a sort of light-headedness and vertigo overtook me, and presently I sank reeling to the few octaves of my normal habitat.

In the "level" dimension there seemed to be no limit to my power of locomotion, and it was in this dimension chiefly that I sought the vanished nymph. I pressed forward through ever-changing tonal landscapes. Sometimes they opened out into "level" vistas of remote, dim, musical objects, or into "tonal" vistas, deep and lofty, revealing hundreds of octaves above and below me. Sometimes the view narrowed, by reason of the dense musical "vegetation," to a mere tunnel, no more than a couple of octaves in height. Only with difficulty could I work my way along such a passage. Sometimes, in order to avoid impenetrable objects, I had to clamber far into the treble or the bass. Sometimes, in empty regions, I had to leap from perch to perch.

At last I began to weary. Movement became repugnant, perception uncertain. Moreover the very form of my body lost something of its pleasant fullness. Instinct now impelled me to an act which surprised my intellect though I performed it without hesitation. Approaching certain luscious little musical objects, certain very simple but vigorous little enduring patterns of timbre and harmony, I devoured them. That is, I broke down the sound-pattern of each one into simpler patterns; and these I incorporated into my own harmonious form. Then I passed on, refreshed.

Presently I was confronted by a crowd of the intelligent beings tumbling helter-skelter toward me and jostling one another in their haste. Their emotional timbre expressed such fear and horror that my own musical form was infected with it. Hastily moving myself several octaves toward the bass to avoid their frantic course, which was mostly in the treble, I shouted to them to tell me what was the matter. As they fled past I distinguished only a cry which might be translated, "The Big Bad Wolf."

My fear left me, for now I recognized that this was a flock of very young creatures. So I laughed reassuringly and asked if they had encountered the lovely being whom I was seeking. And I laughed to myself at the ease and sweetness with which her musical name came to me when I needed it. They answered only with an augmented scream of infantile grief, as they faded into the distance.

Disturbed, I pursued my journey. Presently I came into a great empty region where I could hear a very remote but ominous growl. I halted, to listen to the thing more clearly. It was approaching. Its form emerged from the distance and was heard in detail. Soon I recognized it as no mere childish bogey but a huge and ferocious brute. With lumbering motion in the bass, its limbs propelled it at a surprising speed. Its harsh tentacles of sound, flickering hither and thither far up into the treble, nosed in search of prey.

Realizing at last the fate that had probably befallen my dear companion, I turned sick with horror. My whole musical body trembled and wavered with faintness.

Before I had decided what to do, the brute caught sight of me, or rather sound of me, and came pounding toward me with the roar and scream of a train, or an approaching shell. I fled. But soon realizing that I was losing ground, I plunged into a thicket of chaotic sound, which I heard ahead of me and well up in the treble. Adapting my musical form and colour as best I could to the surrounding wilderness, I continued to climb. Thus I hoped both to conceal myself and escape from the reach of the creature's tentacles. Almost fainting from the altitude, I chose a perch, integrating my musical limbs with the pattern of the fixed objects in that locality. Thus anchored, I waited, motionless.

The brute was now moving more slowly, nosing in search of me as it approached. Presently it lay immediately below me, far down in the bass. Its body was now all too clearly heard as a grim cacophony of growling and belching. Its strident tentacles moved beneath me like the waving tops of trees beneath a man clinging to a cliff face. Still searching, it passed on beneath me. Such was my relief that I lost consciousness for a moment and slipped several octaves down before I could recover myself. The movement revealed my position. The beast of prey returned, and began clambering awkwardly toward me. Altitude soon checked its progress, but it reached me with one tentacle, one shrieking arpeggio. Desperately I tried to withdraw myself farther into the treble, but the monster's limb knit itself into the sound-pattern of my flesh. Frantically struggling, I was dragged down, down into the suffocating bass. There, fangs and talons of sound tore me agonizingly limb from limb.

Then suddenly I woke in the concert hall to a great confusion of scraping chairs. The audience was making ready to leave.


Online Works of Olaf Stapledon http://www.geocities.com/olafstapledon_archive/aworldofsound.html

Currently reading : The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu By Debra DeSalvo Release date: January, 2006

9:49 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Loreena McKennitt introduces herself *an excerpt
Category: Music

Be compassionate and never forget how to love
Think inclusively
Reclaim noble values such as truth, honesty, honour, courage.
Respect one's elders and look to what they have to teach you
Be empathetic
Look after the less fortunate in society.
Promote and protect diversity
Respect the gifts of the natural world.
Set your goals high and take pride in what you do.
Cherish and look after your body, and, as the ancient Greeks believed, your mind will serve you better
Put back into the community as there have been those before you have done the same and you are reaping what they sowed.
Participate in and protect democracy. It does not thrive as a spectator sport.
Undertake due diligence in everything
Seek balance and space, and solitude.
Don't be afraid to feel passionate about something
Learn to be an advocate and an ambassador for good
Be mindful of your limitations.
Indulge and nurture your curiosity as it will keep you vital
Take charge of your life and don't fall into the pit of entitlement.
Assume nothing and take nothing for granted
Things are not necessarily what they seem

I am extremely  happy  to  let everyone know that we now have permission to play  Loreena's wonderful music  on CygnusRadio ; I have long been a fan   of hers , and she is a model for all artists who choose to remain independent .........

9:06 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

For Every Mother
Current mood: happy
Category: Life

Happy Mothers Day to you All..This is a tear jerker but a great tribute! Pass it on to all the Moms in your life. Thank you for all you do! You are appreciated. J


Mothers

If you send this to just one person, it should make it all the way around the world by Mother's Day.

This is for the mothers who have sat up all night with sick toddlers in their arms, wiping up barf laced with Oscar Mayer wieners and cherry Kool-Aid saying, "It's alright honey, Mommy's here."

Who have sat in rocking chairs for hours on end soothing crying babies who can't be comforted.

This is for all the mothers who show up at work with spit-up in their hair and milk stains on their blouses and diapers in their purse.

For all the mothers who run carpools and make cookies and sew Halloween costumes. And all the mothers who DON'T.

This is for the mothers who gave birth to babies they'll never see. And the mothers who took those babies and gave them homes. And for the mothers who lost their baby in that precious 9 months that they will never get to watch grow on earth but one day will be reunited with in Heaven!

This is for the mothers whose priceless art collections are hanging on their refrigerator doors.

And for all the mothers who froze their buns on metal bleachers at football or soccer games instead of watching from the warmth of their cars, so that when their kids asked, "Did you see me, Mom?" they could say, "Of course, I wouldn't have missed it for the world," and mean it.

This is for all the mothers who yell at their kids in the grocery store and swat them in despair when they stomp their feet and scream for ice cream before dinner. And for all the mothers who count to ten instead, but realize how child abuse happens.

This is for all the mothers who sat down with their children and explained all about making babies. And for all the (grand) mothers who wanted to, but just couldn't find the words.

This is for all the mothers who go hungry, so their children can eat.

For all the mothers who read "Goodnight, Moon" twice a night for a year. And then read it again. "Just one more time."

This is for all the mothers who taught their children to tie their shoelaces before they started school. And for all the mothers who opted for Velcro instead.

This is for all the mothers who teach their sons to cook and their daughters to sink a jump shot.

This is for every mother whose head turns automatically when a little voice calls "Mom?" in a crowd, even though they know their own offspring are at home -- or even away at college.

This is for all the mothers who sent their kids to school with stomach aches assuring them they'd be just FINE once they got there, only to get calls from the school nurse an hour later asking them to please pick them up. Right away.

This is for mothers whose children have gone astray, who can't find the words to reach them.

This is for all the step-mothers who raised another woman's child or children, and gave their time, attention, and love... sometimes totally unappreciated!

For all the mothers who bite their lips until they bleed when their 14-year-olds dye their hair green.

For all the mothers of the victims of recent school shootings, and the mothers of those who did the shooting.

For the mothers of the survivors, and the mothers who sat in front of their TVs in horror, hugging their child who just came home from school, safely.

This is for all the mothers who taught their children to be peaceful, and now pray they come home safely from a war.


What makes a good Mother anyway? Is it patience? Compassion? Broad hips? The ability to nurse a baby, cook dinner, and sew a button on a shirt, all at the same time? Or is it in her heart? Is it the ache you feel when you watch your son or daughter disappear down the street, walking to school alone for the very first time? The jolt that takes you from sleep to dread, from bed to crib at 2 A.M. to put your hand on the back of a sleeping baby? The panic, years later, that comes again at 2 A.M. when you just want to hear their key in the door and know they are safe again in your home? Or the need to flee from wherever you are and hug your child when you hear news of a fire, a car accident, a child dying?

The emotions of motherhood are universal and so our thoughts are for young mothers stumbling through diaper changes and sleep deprivation...

And mature mothers learning to let go.

For working mothers and stay-at-home mothers.

Single mothers and married mothers.

Mothers with money, mothers without.

This is for you all.

For all of us.

Hang in there.

In the end we can only do the best we can.

Tell them every day that we love them.

And pray.


Please pass along to all the Moms in your life.

"Home is what catches you when you fall - and we all fall."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Happy Mothers Day to all of you of !!!



Love and HUGS
Swannie

6:19 AM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Embracing Beltaine
Current mood: satisfied
Category: Religion and Philosophy

From my own perspective  ..  the universe  presents  some of us with the  paradoxical...  One truth is not  the  truth  .. the need to make attachments is a deep human  and spiritual  need . While many  of the worlds religions  teach  transcendance   over the material world  or detachment  from the world of  passion and matter  as an  ideal goal  ; not all "sacred teachings " of the world really  teach  detachment . Many "sacred teachings " of the  world are rooted in  tribal  proscriptions  for survival , and even  make class distinctions .  The current trendy  western notion   of "Karma" is deeply rooted in  the  eastern  caste system  and historically  provided a "spiritual basis" for widepread practices  of  prejudice and inequality . Some of  these sacred teachings are also  rooted in early socialisation and leave behind the vital  and primal   numinous connections with the  spirit in all matter  that  our earliest ancestors  felt so deeply ; and  they lived  their lives knowing that everything  had life ; its own spirit  ; and was sacred  inherently   and soley  because it existed .

   As necessary and vital  as detachment  may be  for some situations and  even knowing   detachment  is integral  to some individual  situations  and spiritual paths  ; the paradigm is not the same for eveyone  . One truth is not always " the"  truth  for  individual  spiritual  paths  . There are some individual  spiritual paths  and belief systems  which are founded  on the need to make attachments ,  build or rebuild  trust; create  sacred bonds ,  build our own "sacred teachings"  from walking our own individual paths  as sacred . Walking  into  loving arms that  comfort you can be a part of a spiritual path for some  as much as  detaching from them can be for others .  Involving oneself in  passionate  creative  endeavors ; humanitarian or philanthropical  causes can be equally as  transcendental   and  spiritually enriching and fulfilling  as detaching and disinvolving .

 Attaching onself  to the earth as sacred,  and knowing  existence  to be   inherently on that level of matter  is  as of  much importance as any existence   on a spiritual  level  to some paths , and for some there is no separation or  dichotomy, of one from the other . Life  becomes   not a process of  separation,  but one of experiencing fusion and   joining . Beltaine  celebrates this  fusion  and joining  of  earth and spirit  as joyful and welcome the creation of life as  the outcome of this  most abundant process .

   Holding that entity   which so generously provides  us that journey around the sun every  year   to be sacred  , is an  attachment ;  to  something that is spiritually  alive , rather  than the view of matter as inert and meaningless , and  rather  than to be detached from ,  to be embraced lovingly is a deeply  sacred view of  life . To be  fully alive and feel  the feeling in process rather than to  detach and separate  is as  valid a choice   as detaching   to  achieve  the  safety  of avoiding  being hurt.

Kahlil  Gibran said about love 

if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

   For me personally  .. I feel   that  love of life embraces life  fully , rather than detaches  from it ..

Each if us do indeed find our own  truth  .. and  that  truth  once found becomes sacred .

  Namaste

  Swannie

7:50 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment