A traveler joined a Jewish and Turkish man talking over tea at the Bursa silk market in an exquisite stone Caravansary.
“I lost today,” said the Jewish man.
“What do you mean," said his friend. “You made 3,000,000 Lira.”
“Yes, but I lost one day.”
Broken glittering glass edges reflecting an elegant universe magnified the tears of an Iraqi girl burying her parents in a white shroud of cloth, an old flag of final surrender.
Tree leaves blasted green to deep yellow and brown. They flew into a river. They gathered on boulders clogging the Rio Guadalete and dolomite waterfalls. One leaf could do a lot of damage. The river needed cleaning.
"See," said the Grand Inquisitor ringing his broken Spanish bell, "it’s all possible. Everything is permitted if there is no God."
"Let’s invent a God," said a pregnant nun supporting her nose habit. "We need reason and faith to believe in a higher power."
"Reason and faith are incompatible," said a logic board filled with circular flux reactors.
"Look," said Little Nino, "I found a compass and it works. The needle is pointing to magnetic north. This may help us. I am a compass without a needle."
Ahmed the Berber read the instructions. "Great Scott! It says one sharp line of description is better than any number of mundane observations."
"You don’t need a compass in the land of dreams," said a mother. "We need all the direction we can handle."
"Maybe one direction is enough," said a cartographer.
"If you need a helping hand," said a child, "look at the end of your wrist."
"O wise one, tell us another," cried a disembodied voice.
"Ok, how about this," a child said. "Our days of instant gratification are a thing of the past."
"Looks like everything is a thing of the past," observed a child sifting dust particles at Ground Earth on 9/11.
"You’re wiser than your years."
"That’s an old saw with a rusty blade cutting through desire, anger, greed, ignorance and suffering."
"Yes," said a child, "there are two kinds of suffering."
"What are they?" asked another orphan.
"There’s suffering you run away from and suffering you face,” said a child arranging leaves on blank pages inside her black book.
"Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself."
- Thomas Merton Read more…
"When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, like flute notes rising up, like the words of glass speaking. Then there comes a point when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light."
- Anne Spollen
The Shape of Water
bufflehead cabin Read more…
It is to be broken. It is to be
torn open. It is not to be
reached and come to rest in
ever. I turn against you,
I break from you, I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt,
and have each other for healing.
It is healing. It is never whole.
- Wendell Berry Read more…
An unprecedented wave of egalitarian support featuring millions of sad, serene women facing arranged marriages filled with empty hopes and vague promises of love and happiness enlisted to become engaged to strangers across transcendental borders.
This wave resembled an open hand gesturing in the eternal present of a long now as a mother gifting her daughter a long fare well gesture watched her disappear into life’s teeming stream.
“Be well my love. You are in our hearts.”
Her daughter joined a tribe of singing, sighing women. They were living their dream fate and making sacrifices with clear intention, motivation, determination and focus. The entourage of singing women danced through valleys, climbed jagged Eastern Mountains of Regret and entered a no-name village where males pounded war drums and hammered plowshares into word swords.
Marginalized poor angry males killed each other over pita bread, olives, fresh tomatoes, kebabs and geographical dust while studying imaginary maps.
“The map is not the territory,” said Visualization, a cartographer.
“Where is this place?” said Curious in a strange village in a strange country on a strange planet in a strange solar system in a strange universe.
“It is far away,” said a gravedigger with earth moving experience. “It is a dysfunctional place where bronze statues of fallen soldiers, warriors, corrupt politicians and testosterone fueled fools rust, make millions off the sweat of fools and congratulate each other on their mutual doubts, stupidity and insatiable greed.”
Wind said to women, “Go home. Return to your families and friends. Live in peace.”
Women followed their heart-mind.
“Are you alive?” she said to her cellular daughter.
“I survived,” said a disembodied voice.
“Where are you? When are you coming home?”
“I’m with a tribe of women. We’re breaking down old conservative values. They are so narrow we’ll need a crowbar or acetylene torch or C-4. We’re developing personal empowerment and dignity. I’ll be home soon, dear mother.” Her voice died. Mother swallowing ignorance lapsed into doubt’s quicksand.
At sunset an imam’s recorded voice twittered from a mosque near the private hospital. “Allah is great and merciful. Buy a ticket.”
Push Play.
Hagia Sophia...
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