>>>>Jane Through The Seasons

“No, there is not more beauty here than in other places, and all these objects, which have been marveled at by generation after generation, mended and restored by the hands of workmen, mean nothing, are nothing, and have no heart and no value;––but there is much beauty here, because everywhere there is much beauty.”  (Rainer Maria Rilke. Letters to a Young Poet. Trans. Stephen Mitchell. NY: Modern Library, 2001, p. 47)

Sleep doesn’t come like she used to. And not only do I know better to not be bitter, I feel no bitterness towards her. I sense I am afraid. Of what I know not of. But I am mocked by my mind of the merry jokes I once made of how well I slept, no less than the really-really dead. And I feel I have a new friend, an imaginary one actually––but what is not imaginary? My new friend is Chaucer’s speaker from the Book of the Duchess. My dear friend begun his tale with such melancholic lines, which I feel a strong urge to perform (to no audience except self) amidst tremendous l…

How has it been with you? I am trying to live in the moment as best I can. If you have been waiting for the conclusion to the "Expecting Everything Experiment" (see part I, II & III), pardon me for keeping you waiting. But here it is now: what my experience––the result of more  than a year of conscious experiment––has taught me is that one is love, and one is meant for love and to love. Thus the heart sings of love and compels one to love. The question then is what is love? It seems to me that finding the answer to this question––what is love, i.e. what are you––is one’s life purpose. Therefore, one’s life purpose is to learn how one is love and how to be love, effortlessly. And by love I do not mean eros, but more along the line of agape.

Imagine if you could love unconditionally, free of expectations and attachments. Wouldn’t it be the most beautiful and joyous way to live? To give freely of yourself and find the act a reward in of itself. To meet every being in love …

Sarabande
by Norma Cole

“and then looks at
the stars” from the
bed in the ambulance

looks up at boughs of
trees shifting quickly
lit in blackness

blackening soft, deep
siren’s song—she died
several times that night

and only in the weeks
to come started and
started to come back

then forward which is
real life

--
from Do the Monkey

ke kake      ka kane ŋlan pun    ŋɛ pu no
--
gift one         bite light  burn sun    in the wild
--- JAO