Airy

Dream again like as a child
When you went wand’ring in the wood
And seeking lonely in the wild
Found the evil and the good

Fly thy spirit like the leaves
In autumn wind caught in the draft
An airy pattern so to weave
Learning heaven’s sacred craft

Speak as if the world could hear
For all that’s hid shall come to light
And all your words shall find an ear
Come the dawn that follows night

Love, to hear what heartbeats say
The whispered wishes hearts will send
That all of life’s collected days
Of love we’re given what we spend

On the one hand, in matters of the spirit, nothing fails like success. On the other hand, in matters of the spirit, nothing succeeds like failure.

In which I look around, and see that I have been at the top of the world, and didn’t realize it. I have fretted for no reason; I worry without need; my world is aright in all ways, just that I am stupid in the little things, and have thought them like as to great of strife. I must remember that I am loved. Such is the pearl without price, that some of us cast off, not knowing what the treasure is, to go all around the whole world just to get back that something we had before we went. The best things in life are not only free, but they are free in abundance — so much so that we sometimes feel that we could do without them, the casual comforts of such things as family, and a soul. It is in which I look around, and for one blessed moment, I am properly thankful for the greatness of ordinary things; in which I look around, and I am happy.

And why does no one think it, that the meaning of life is to find happiness? Does no one want a simple answer? Would they rather chase their own tail until they fall down dizzy from the futile search for what is already a part of them? For I know this feeling will pass, and I will eventually find myself in confusion and anxiety again, but I have for once achieved a base ground whereupon I may stand against the wind. And I know that we are all of us tested, but we will find that we are all to be rewarded — though the latter part for some of us is a mystery in how it may be. We may choose, though, to believe. We go through this life only once, however familiar the scenery may be, and it behooves us to never lose that sense of wonder at things, even if we must go out of our way to bring it out of us again. Some things are worth it.

See that there is meaning here, right in front of us, and hope need never die. Dreams can come true, I think, and sometimes we will find that they have already, if we have but eyes to see: we’ve merely forgotten what they had been, when we were innocently distracted, and did not happen to look back.

I dream of you, whom I have not yet met. Like the poem says, “somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond”: I have that one memorized, if you wanted to know. I always imagined it was possible; and it could be happening to me, right now, though even though I am putting the idea on paper right now, I really can’t believe that life could be so miraculous. Truly, it was accurate of us when He said of these our hearts, “Ye of little faith”. But it must happen, don’t you think? Why the stories persist of that thing called, “magic” — wouldn’t the notion have evolved out of us if it never brought to fruit? If I step into the mere concept, there is the sudden opposite of fear, the feeling of dauntless invulnerability… or almost. It couldn’t be true, could it, really? Or is love like that? Like all the ideas I have of it: to forget them all?

Do not burn the books out of fear of losing the fire.

I dreamed of the three moons that were reflected in her eyes:
like the three fates of my going and undoing, and the unknown,
and I forget where I have been, like a constant beginning….

The future is but a question mark
Hangs above my head, there in the dark
Can’t see for the brightness is staring me blind
God bid yesterday good-bye

Bring on the night
I couldn’t spend another hour of daylight
Bring on the night
I couldn’t stand another hour of daylight

I couldn’t spend another hour of daylight
I couldn’t stand another hour of daylight

– The Police

Franz Marc: Foxes

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As against Thee, as without Thee, man is a thing of naught; ... as of Thee, man is a pearl of price, the reflection of Thy own personal infinity, the child and heir of immortality. He was formed in Thy creative counsels, O Thou Lover of man, to transcend death forever, and to persist, not in a part of his being only, but in its indissoluble ideal whole, unto the life of the world to come.

I am quiet upon the world. I am absorbing the time that flows into my eyes, exhaling warmth that has lived. Dreams need not be chased, I think, every waking moment, not if they prove true enough to last through all the distractions befalling modern, miracle man. And I wonder what time it is: not in the mundane sense, but what age does the world believe itself to be in? Is it the time of hope, the time of kindness? I know it never is. But no one knows what time it is until it has past; for we are too much inside the going. I might guess it matters little, for many purposes, for fate will strike with blind precision the strangest tangents of thought, igniting them, while enterprises of great pith and moment, by its hand turn awry and lose the name of action. Who is to know what comes next? Except that much of it — no one but we make it happen.

In the dreaming, there is a land of perpetual silence in eternal wait, forgotten what for.

In the dreaming, the moon flew across the sky in a few minutes, impatient to get back to sleep.

In the dreaming, clouds swirled as if the finger of God were mixing the sky, just before drinking it.

In the dreaming, if I ever tasted anything, I do not recall, imaginary food being made of wondering.

In the dreaming, there were warning signs that something approached, but no one listened.

In the dreaming, fire never burned me, a greater mystery there than is light, in this world.

In the dreaming, I saw all the way to the end, and saw a great blank, as if we were to fill that part in.

I dream like somehow, it will all come together, then realizing painfully that it is I who will have to gather the pieces myself.

Accident

I need to live my whole life by accident,
I think, because all the best things I’ve done
happened that way; very little on purpose
ever amounted to much — or worse,
went terribly, horribly wrong, somehow.
There are many sayings, too, on how
the goal is not to succeed, as if
that were an impossible thing, that rather,
one should try to fail splendidly,
to fail spectacularly, to fail better,
to fail and to learn from it, and then
fail at some higher level, whatever that means.
In other words, we are all fools;
it’s just that not all of us are aware of it:
or as the philosopher put it, the highest
of knowledge is to know one knows nothing.
Somehow, though, the world moves on
(if not forward, in any real sense),
progressing as progress does, that all of it,
all the failures added together,
somehow comes to a positive sum:
or is it sometimes people cheat?
But that’s what I was talking about,
to start this thing off: accidentally, one gets
somewhere ahead of where one started.
Maybe there’s an art to it…. but learning
such a thing as accidental winning —
it could be that the effort of that
may be better spent heaving at the wheel
of chance, that the scraps that drop out
would taste better, and be more
than cheating nature itself, the nature
of this fool, bewildered by success, anyway.

Life’s lesson: there is not but love that has ever existed. If there is no love to a thing, that thing is as good as never having been: for all that is, has an end, unless it is of the infinite and immortal: and that is love, and only love; even death shall die, one day. And if there is no love to a thing, what is any finity in the scope of forever? I say that it is not at all. For in the next world, there shall be no more suffering and tears, and none from the world before it shall ever be brought to mind; but that which love has touched we carry with ourselves always into the stretches of the everafter. That is all that we need learn about life, why we will not wish at the end of life to have spent more time at the office; why you should always give one last hug to anyone who can receive it. What can make a casual scrap a treasure beyond all rubies.

The afternoon has gently passed me by
The evening spreads its sail against the sky
Waiting for tomorrow, just another day
God bid yesterday good-bye

Bring on the night
I couldn’t spend another hour of daylight
Bring on the night
I couldn’t stand another hour of daylight

– The Police

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Landscape with Distant River and Bay

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A heartbreak need not be caused by some kind of grievous injury to the soul. If properly placed, a slight tap will do it, if upon a particularly precarious hope the shield is set that one fractures. And we wonder why we hurt so much from it. As Pascal said, that the heart has its reason that reason knows not of, yes: love is logic, and who is to know why, when one brings that up in the tiniest of applications? But the surprising thing is that we will still be surprised. We are all of us so jaded, that such a thing that is sung by a thousand people in the five ways that it can be sung about — why would anything be new to us in the ways of love? Yet the hope is met, that thing we dare not even whisper, perhaps that if to say it would be to render it powerless, or that one scarcely believe it is so: we can fall in love. And it is this hope which is so very vulnerable, and susceptible to the slightest damage, and break our heart — without us ever suspecting that we could believe in such things, anymore.

I am persuaded that some have scarce any better or more forcible argument to satisfy their own minds that they are in the right in religion than the inclination they find in themselves to hate and persecute them whom they suppose to be in the wrong.