Now a day man is impatience in the earth. We have no sympathy to others. Though we need to be kind as a greatest creature in nature. Because we are not beast. But lot of our activity is as like as animal. We are same blood colored human. Whereas we need to bond strong […]
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Giant Redwoods
(Statements in italics taken from Ethics, by Baruch de Spinoza)
Look farther and farther toward thin blue sky, until the green feathery tops of the trees are like the northern pole on some dream planet. Put the anger back in its bottle. These trees are generous. Hatred can never be good.
Your carsickness from the ride up the mountain begins to fade, leaving behind a breathless, weepy echo not unlike your first religious fervor. Hatred is increased through return of hatred, but may be destroyed by love.
When have you not been afraid? The random can be scrutinized for meaning, the puzzle solved, when surveyed long & carefully enough. Anything may be accidentally the cause of either hope or fear.
These trees have plenty of time. As a child, you stared at Jesus’ sad face for hours, wishing you could marry him — wondering what it was that made him love you. Could you sacrifice yourself for the sins of the world, if it was that simple & necessary? Cathedrals turn us small and vulnerable again, for reasons both blessed & cursed. Devotion is love towards an object which astonishes us.
Vague, starry eyes like yours feel at home here; the air is weighty, burdensome & solemn. You’ve loved trees before; this is different. These trees have plenty of time – more time than you. If we love a thing which is like ourselves, we endeavor as much as possible to make it love us in return.
Your nerves are suddenly frozen, by the unaccustomed richness of perfect light. Your guide is tall & slender, hesitant to speak. Her mother has the tattooed forearm of a Polish Jew of a certain age. The knowledge of good and evil is nothing but an idea of joy or sorrow. Sorrow is [a hu]man’s passage from a greater to a less perfection.
These trees have plenty of time. She touches your wrist, and for a moment, you, too, want to grow taller, leaving the surface of the earth behind forever. Shyly, she picks up a tiny pinecone, smaller than a toy. You both laugh when she tells you this is their seed. Joy is [a hu]man’s passage from a less to a greater perfection.
These trees have plenty of time. And all around, their wise, fallen, hollow bodies litter the ground like the bones of saints. Childlike, you understand a wish to die here, never to leave this hush. They’re only trees – your neck bent back as far as it will go; only trees, yet wondering if the giants can hear your thoughts. Love is joy, with the accompanying idea of an external cause. Love and desire may be excessive. When the mind imagines its own weakness, it necessarily sorrows.
Is there anything we have less power over than our own tongues? These trees have plenty of time, growing wise as the Buddha, in their silence.
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How Art Thou Received? (a prayer for refugees)
Imagine: suddenly, without warning (because that is how war arrives) you are a war refugee! Simply running away from being murdered. And how are you received when you can finally stop running, when you are out of range of the guns, the bombs, the blood? No countries to take you. No one to feed you. You are a skeletal pawn in a skeletal game.
Embalmed corpses declare war on the living and fight for their “territory” against other embalmed corpses using armies of young people; embalmed corpses feeding on fresh, young blood.
I know something is very wrong, somewhere. It must be addressed, and addressed properly. Our prayer, our incantation, our spell to heal, must be more powerfully crafted, more distilled, more essential, than was the horrid spell we are trying to break: a tradition of might over right, strong but wrong, a spell of ignorance which has caused so much harm, and is trying to do more… powered by the love of power, the love of control over people.
The scarred parts of the heart can be replenished; the broken parts, glued; the weak parts, strengthened; the fear assuaged, the pain relieved. But the desire to change, to truly alchemize oneself, spin that straw into gold… the gold of the sun… the silver of the stars… the red planet… the North Star… primal navigation by looking not at the ground, but by looking up, to the sky… that kind of desire doesn’t visit often.
If you want to know where you are going, be sure your map is accurate, or at least doesn’t kill you. Migrating birds know this. Power & Liberation. Slave & free. Joy & Suffering. High & low.
Craving slaves, some are trying to roll us back to serfdom, only they can use our own science & technology to rape us! Serfdom: tied by birth to land. You are a pawn, a source of income; in thrall to your Lord and Master. Freeing serfs is always a struggle. Brute force arm-wrestles the human race, and brute force often pins people to the mat, but… you cannot keep people down for long. The oppressed will continue to spring up and defend their inalienable human rights. All people are created equal: including our ancestors, who existed long before the self-anointed first “private property” owners. Human beings are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, yes? The earth cannot belong to any one of us. Period. We own this planet. All of us.
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Crocuses, a poem
I. Signs of Spring
Suddenly, there they were by the front door,
and at my son’s preschool — purple and yellow
and green, poking through the snow
like small erections, out of the body of the earth,
the earth’s slumbering winter body.
My husband was always at work then,
they, the flowers, were my best companions.
“God is!” they said. “We’re God’s greatest effort,” they said,
“We’re God’s peeping blooms, despair must go to sleep,
and all creatures must go out of their lairs to frolic.”
My husband did not feel the urge.
II. The Mole
Such loneliness I had battled all winter!
I made chicken, hot crescent rolls,
and buttered beans to make us happy,
but my husband was never hungry.
Lots of things took his appetite clean away.
I hadn’t scrubbed the toilet in two weeks,
this distressed him, he was a stern master.
The crocuses were so calm and forgiving,
purple and yellow like bruises;
my husband inflicted bruises without knowing.
He could not see, or did not want to.
His face lit up upon our child, that was all.
He was too important to sweep, or dust, or scrub.
I was the babysitter. I was happy with the crocuses,
and then one day, a dead mole; my son didn’t know
what dead meant, so I had to explain it.
He petted the soft fur, wanted to snuggle it
to his cheek. We paid homage to the mole.
We buried it under the snow, amid the crocuses.
III. Troubling Questions
My husband didn’t know the bruises he left behind;
the flowers were my trusted companions.
His face lit up, gazing upon his son,
his finest possession; my husband would jerk him
away from me, hate in his eyes, when the crying boy
awoke in the night. The crocuses poked their heads out,
asking questions I couldn’t answer. My husband
didn’t want to see the bruises, or he was colorblind.
He was too important to notice the marks.
The crocuses asked, “Where is pleasure?”
“Not here,” I said. “Maybe next door?”
IV. The Body’s Lament
The earth’s body was waking up,
but mine wasn’t, my husband was too important
to worry about my body. The head of his penis
was purple like the crocuses, but it asked no questions.
His body was warm, but not for me:
for the pure idea of sex, the attractive notion.
He wanted a thinner, more charming woman
with a better degree, one who would clean the house
more often, and with a smile.
Oh, he wanted a warm, dark place to set
himself, but one with no conversation.
As I put away the winter wools, the smell of mothballs,
white, crystalline like snow, inflamed my fears.
When the rest of spring arrived,
the warm air did not ease the tightness,
the block of ice around my heart.
Kimberly Townsend Palmer 