Distaff Notes

by Izora Firelands, Horticulture Editor

1. The body is a tension battery. Meditation helps, but slowly. Yoga is better. Rolfing is too fast and teaches the body that only external agents really work.

2. We can (have the ability to) also be an ecstasy battery. Slow down, plug in.

3. Trees shelter birds, squirrels, and an occasional snake. So do we. So do we. (Our belief in our existential "purity" is primitive and simplistic hubris.) Mobile trees.

4. Acculturation = metaphysical disenfranchisement. Learning to refocus one’s attention = metaphysical re-empowerment. Not paradise regained. Not childhood regained. Shackles dropped.

5. Tree porn. The image of the Great Tree with its ten thousand twinkling lights.

6. We are, laughably, in our scientific and linguistic playpen, nominalists manqués. The spirits do have names, and wholly proper ones at that.

7. What will be the new recording medium? "Ether"? "Plasma"?

8. Meter stick. You can measure your progress by the accuracy and frequency with which you can keep track psychically of the comings and goings of those you care about.

9. Through our mindlessness, we turn the body-eden into a prison, shackles, a rut. Ease out.

10. Nature nurtures. Subtly, slowly, quietly, gently, powerfully. Tramping and camping about is not the way of emerging consciousness. The ego walls must come down, and then you must be still, again and again. And again. Sustenance flows through.

11. There exists a ground of being where, with perfection, your pain and your pleasure, your lies to yourself and to others, your false efforts and your true, your honest mistakes and your dishonest mistakes are in some way known. A balance, fair beyond our perceiving and merciful beyond our best hopes, is always struck.

12. During drought, does the earth stop being earth? Do seeds stop being seeds?

13. Your muscles, all your organs are starved for prolonged mindful, heartful attention. Not of the artless, heartless calisthenics, aerobic variety. Yoga, tai chi.

14. Isn’t the road better than the bushes?

15. Road signs? Yes, many, usually felt, not seen. They are known as "heart’s desires."

16. View your circumcision as a battle scar, if you like.

17. Congruence, existential congruence is possible. Between "entities," between sentient systems.

18. Road signs: resonances from possible futures.

19. Mutual purification through congruence.

20. Isolation is in the eye—and skin—of the beholder, and the beholden.

21. Symbols of empowerment. Numbers, words.

22. I sought solace. This is what I found. It helped. I don’t know what it means.

23. Do not take pride in any of your accomplishments. They have all been injurious. You have no way of knowing how injurious and to whom.

24. Go gently along the path. There may be other effective demeanors. I am doubtful.

25. One day your pelvis will feel full and you will know you are pregnant.

26. Either we enter new worlds and find new cultures, or we stultify, as did the Chinese behind their many walls.

27. The trees have been lonely even longer than we have.

28. Without frequent, regular, mindful balancing, growth old and new will continue warped and stunted. The tree grows with the prevailing wind, weather, soil, and friends. We can choose to grow straight.

29. Joy trickles briefly through a tiny, fast-closing hole in my joy-resistant armor. I am left awestruck, hopeful.

30. Meditation by analogy. Trees. Swans. Rocks, even. Put yourself in their place.

31. The east can learn something from the west about the metaphysical value of the bowed head. A valve opens.

32. The law of equivalent communication: Nature speaks on a level and in a language equivalent to the emotional content of your questioning.

33. Emotion is our flat-earth, our uncharted sea, our mis-apprehended reality. They, remember, watched ships disappear at the horizon but ignored the obvious implication. What is the equally obvious, equally ignored implication of laughter?

34. Science. "Science." As primitive, narrow, and distorting as any organized religion. It succeeds and replicates because in an age of instant gratification it produces instant, repeatable results. How quickly it could be healthily displaced and superseded!

35. Playground, not prison, always, when you choose yes, always.

36. Not tests, not burdens, not punishments, but opportunities for growth.

37. The communion and fellowship of things.

38. It would be difficult to overestimate the comfort Houston has given me.

39. Trees: The half which brings and supports life is not visible.

40. You do not learn a language in a day but in 10,000 days. Daily, incremental exposure: the habit of learning. Quantum leaps occur, but rarely. Between them, progress is gradual.

41. We belong not only to (and among) people but to and among everything. We profit from contact, as do they, the 10,000 things. They miss us.

42. "We leave before the saw starts a cut. It’s O.K."

43. Infinite fields of flowers are there for the taking, but they show themselves only to gentle seekers. The heavy-handed find only weeds and nettles and poison ivy. Hence their angry trampling.

44. Above, below, above, below. One gives language, purpose, inspiration, respect. Water brothers pass along the always singing song.

45. We come back every morning. But from where?

46. Breath empowers. Re-empowers. Enfranchises. Re-enfranchises. Free, and necessary.

47. Never, never be ashamed of love.

48. Inter- and intra-planar pedagogy: Present and make clear the choices and potentials. Then, step back. No interference. The occasional gift, a reminder is O.K. (but be prepared—it may be rejected [Gandhi, etc.]).

49. Reading the Hsin Hsin Ming is like knowing Algebra I and being given a tiny book containing all past and future mathematics: errors, blind alleys, blinding insights, and all.

50. Those who rule feel put upon and underappreciated. Thus do they justify their appropriations, exploitations, and violences.

END

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