WHAT THE ANCESTORS WANT by Alfred K LaMotte

 The ancestors want you to know,

you are not required to carry their pain.

Your mother did not spin the web that nets you,
you wove it from your own desire.

Yesterday’s rain won’t nourish this flower;
the new sun drank last night’s tears.

Your grandmothers are singing for you
to birth your own unbearable happiness.

Your grandfathers’ bones are praying for you
to hunt the sweetness in your own marrow.

You think you must stand like a warrior
in the withering crossfire of your father’s blood.

But what wounds you is the wavering blade
of your mind, slashing the past and future.

If you insist on making reparations, plant
a wild pine; let it be a tree of Presence.

You cannot pay them for the privilege of breathing,
for awakening this solitude of beauty.

They need no libation, they thirst for no offering.
They are not hungry ghosts,

But earthworms who luxuriate in loam,
shards of sunlight lodged in magnolia blossoms.

Do not carry them; they do not carry you.
They bear their own grief and laughter.

The past is vanishing smoke, the flame is now.
Be christened with this breath; name yourself.

You sleep alone in the chamber of your ribs.
No one else enters and leaves your lungs.

A mother kissed you, a father held you;
you owe them nothing for this.

They did it for themselves; now let them
be about the business of their next childhood.

Father your heart, Mother your body.
Hold and kiss new sparkling babies.

Give them your grandmother’s name if you must,
but not as a weight, not as a brand on the hip;

But as a prayer, a promise of astonishment
for what has not yet been conceived.

Sometimes a Wild God by Tom Hirons

 Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.

He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine.

When the wild god arrives at the door,
You will probably fear him.
He reminds you of something dark
That you might have dreamt,
Or the secret you do not wish to be shared.

He will not ring the doorbell;
Instead he scrapes with his fingers
Leaving blood on the paintwork,
Though primroses grow
In circles round his feet.

You do not want to let him in.
You are very busy.
It is late, or early, and besides…
You cannot look at him straight
Because he makes you want to cry.

The dog barks.
The wild god smiles,
Holds out his hand.
The dog licks his wounds
And leads him inside.

The wild god stands in your kitchen.
Ivy is taking over your sideboard;
Mistletoe has moved into the lampshades
And wrens have begun to sing
An old song in the mouth of your kettle.

‘I haven’t much,’ you say
And give him the worst of your food.
He sits at the table, bleeding.
He coughs up foxes.
There are otters in his eyes.

When your wife calls down,
You close the door and
Tell her it’s fine.
You will not let her see
The strange guest at your table.

The wild god asks for whiskey
And you pour a glass for him,
Then a glass for yourself.
Three snakes are beginning to nest
In your voicebox. You cough.

Oh, limitless space.
Oh, eternal mystery.
Oh, endless cycles of death and birth.
Oh, miracle of life.
Oh, the wondrous dance of it all.

You cough again,
Expectorate the snakes and
Water down the whiskey,
Wondering how you got so old
And where your passion went.

The wild god reaches into a bag
Made of moles and nightingale-skin.
He pulls out a two-reeded pipe,
Raises an eyebrow
And all the birds begin to sing.

The fox leaps into your eyes.
Otters rush from the darkness.
The snakes pour through your body.
Your dog howls and upstairs
Your wife both exults and weeps at once.

The wild god dances with your dog.
You dance with the sparrows.
A white stag pulls up a stool
And bellows hymns to enchantments.
A pelican leaps from chair to chair.

In the distance, warriors pour from their tombs.
Ancient gold grows like grass in the fields.
Everyone dreams the words to long-forgotten songs.
The hills echo and the grey stones ring
With laughter and madness and pain.

In the middle of the dance,
The house takes off from the ground.
Clouds climb through the windows;
Lightning pounds its fists on the table.
The moon leans in through the window.

The wild god points to your side.
You are bleeding heavily.
You have been bleeding for a long time,
Possibly since you were born.
There is a bear in the wound.

‘Why did you leave me to die?’
Asks the wild god and you say:
‘I was busy surviving.
The shops were all closed;
I didn’t know how. I’m sorry.’

Listen to them:

The fox in your neck and
The snakes in your arms and
The wren and the sparrow and the deer…
The great un-nameable beasts
In your liver and your kidneys and your heart…

There is a symphony of howling.
A cacophony of dissent.
The wild god nods his head and
You wake on the floor holding a knife,
A bottle and a handful of black fur.

Your dog is asleep on the table.
Your wife is stirring, far above.
Your cheeks are wet with tears;
Your mouth aches from laughter or shouting.
A black bear is sitting by the fire.

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine
And brings the dead to life.

Today's Walk (usual haunt)

 

The Roots of Loneliness

 

It remains unhelpfully hard to be able to admit that one is lonely. Unless one has recently been widowed or just moved to a new city, there are no respectable-sounding explanations for why someone would find themselves without a sufficient number of friends. The supposition quickly forms that a person’s loneliness must be explained by something diseased and troubling within their character. If they are lonely, it is because there are things in their nature that merit for them to be left alone.

 

Yet in reality, what makes someone feel lonely isn’t usually that they have no one they can be with, but that they don’t know a sufficient number of people who could understand the more sincere and quirk-filled parts of themselves. A warm body with whom to have a meal isn’t hard to find; there is always someone with whom one might discuss meteorological matters. But true loneliness doesn’t end the moment one is chatting with someone, it ends when a companion is able to follow us closely and honestly in the revelation of the intimate ailments and vulnerabilities of being human.

 

We stop feeling lonely when, at last, someone is there to acknowledge with frankness how perplexing sex remains, how frightening death is, how much envy one feels, how many supposedly small things spark anxiety, how much one sometimes hates oneself, how weepy one can be, how much regret one has, how self-conscious one feels, how complex one’s relationship to one’s parents is, how much misery one harbours, how much unexplored potential one has, how odd one is about different parts of one’s body and how emotionally immature one remains. It’s the capacity to be honest about these potentially embarrassing and little-spoken of sides of human nature that connects us to others and finally brings our isolation to an end.

 

It’s often said that we have built a lonely modern world. If this is so, it has nothing to do with our busy working schedules or gargantuan cities. It has to do with the fiction we tell ourselves about what we’re like. We trade in brutally simplified caricatures, which leave out so much of our real natures – so much of the pain, confusion, wildness and extremity. We’re lonely because we can’t easily admit to other people what we know is true in ourselves – and see no evidence for our peculiarities in public discourse. We tell stories about what we’ve been up to lately or how we feel at the moment that capture almost nothing of the truth of who we are, not because we are liars, but because we are ashamed of the gap between what we sense in ourselves and what is generally spoken of. We’re encouraged to present a cheerful, one-dimensional facade in which everything awkward but essential has been planed off. Without a hold on our true selves and energy to divulge our core, we have no chance of ever genuinely ‘meeting’ anyone else – however many so-called friends we might lay claim to.

 

A first step towards ending loneliness would be to encourage ourselves to investigate our own characters with greater depth – and then reassure us that our discoveries will have analogies with those of other people, even if they are as yet keeping quiet about what these might be. We should be prompted to open the more secret doors of our minds and step into the sad, angry, envious or self-hating rooms – turn on the lights and examine the contents without prudishness or denial, shame or guilt. When we are then next with someone else, we should risk shedding the usual superficial perfectionist expectations and comparing our mutual eccentricity and fear.

 

The heightened loneliness of some melancholy souls can be explained because they are unusually closely in touch with the less public, more candid parts of themselves. They are dissatisfied with their relationships with people around them because they have made friends with so many of the lesser known rooms in their own minds. They haven’t shied away from uncomfortable and surprising ideas and feelings – and hunger to discuss these in unsuperficial dialogue with equally forthright others.  

 

We are lonely because we have collectively been slow to accept that there are delightfully strange and unhinged people who lose little by confessing as much to those we meet. We should allow ourselves to reveal more of who we really are to those with the imagination and sense of adventure to listen, and to bring their own weirdness to the table in turn. Friendship begins when our unwarranted shame can finally be dismissed.

https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/the-roots-of-loneliness/?utm_source=The+School+of+Life&utm_campaign=5c063701ef-TBOL_ENEWS_05062020&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_717e06d46b-5c063701ef-23062509&mc_cid=5c063701ef&mc_eid=d09ca15531

 

How to discover if something is important by Paulo Coelho

 The master was strolling through a field of wheat when a disciple came up to him: “I can’t tell which is the true path. What’s the secret?”

“What does that ring on your right hand mean?” asked the master.

“My father gave it to me before dying.”

“Well, give it to me.”

The disciple obeyed, and the master tossed the ring into the middle of the field of wheat.

“Now what?” shouted the disciple.

“Now I have to stop doing everything I was doing to look for the ring! It’s important to me!”

“When you find it, remember this: you yourself answered the question you asked me. That is how you tell the true path: it is more important than all the rest.”