Daniel Christopher June to the Students of Life:
Greetings!
I've been succeeding in my new job as a mental therapist. The family is as the family always is; life is life – there's nothing worth mentioning. I will mention, nevertheless, that after 18 years of studying Emerson, when my dearest friend Jillian introduced me to the man, I feel I have come to the end of a discipleship and in some sense graduated.
Lately I'm making a sustained and intense study of Emily Dickinson.
Take Care, Caretakers!
* 278 *
Teaching through learning, giving through taking, I skin my knees before each person, my master in some way. All my wisdom from humility's crouch. Returning to each after careful digestion, I give them back themselves. Regarding their worth I learn my own. After all, every relationship is a language, whether with a person, plant, or object: I learn the meaning so to receive and impart will – I teach each my friends and children as they teach me, a new tongue between us, the buttons to push, the pulleys to pull, the command tones and words of incantation.
Music of speech, and dance of gesture, all teaches each, and each teaches all. Years of practice to master the art. Long effort in managing every inflection. Our intensity and extremity mount and grasp full reach. Virtuosos of meaning, our language is our body. Every glance is pregnant. Reverence is the first step to identification.
* 279 *
The conflation of highest with lowest – Odin with Vagabond, Jesus with criminal – meets its greet in me – Aya of madness. A thing must die to eternalize: Adam into God, Ceasar into "the Ceasar," Siddartha into Buddha, Jesus into Christ, Whitman into Kosmos.
Allism as lowest common denominator of all religions – their metalanguage, or Grammar of Importance – and highest of each religious system – immediated eternity – requires ultimately an absolute perfidity. Ama is America. Yet Ama is the Allgoddess. The greatest shall be the one richest in contraries.
* 280 *
I warp my weavings near to truth, and deceive with utter honesty. My transport is subtle, my waver complete. Homeless people master space, able to slip into the city like sand under a fingernail: they see where they remain unseen, they know how to walk unknown. So we all come to earth to master time and space. Poetry masters time, and through casting a spell mystifies the silence enchanting the air. Yet the poetry of the everyday hides. Some of us have eyes wise enough to penetrate high art, but who has eyes wise enough to penetrate the mundane?
Mind is time, body is space. Mastery of world is mastery of self. Know therefore how to freeze the sun from falling, how to glue the moon to the starry sky. When the body falls and mind sublimes, we take this with us, our mastery: all you create you take with. You are your own reward.
The frivolous wish for more hours in the day bespeaks a lack of planning, an unfit agenda. Time spirals on, and if we want more time we must learn to slow things down. Our system of experiences, our memory, our wisdom, is the hiving of meaning, the having of purpose, essencing the real into the ideal, and this to setplate the real yet again. Intensity and extensity bespeak the poles. All history exists in the present, just as all futurisity emwombs in today. There is only the everblessed Now. Eternity is the amplitude of time.
* 281 *
I mistrust the ebullient, but a few small tokens from masked saints confirm me on my path as no open praise ever could. Only that audacious one could win me with her extremity: "I have read every word of your every book and I am proud of it."
* 282 *
I am slow to learn, slower than most – you would not guess how slowly and ploddingly I plough through tomes. Life teaches me the same lessons over and over, suspecting I will never learn. How many dozen times do I read the same essay, how many times the scripture, the poem? Yet I kill my gods, one by one – my independence will never be owned: it owns itself, it murders every hold. I chase through the ashes each hidden ember and swallow it down: where is the beating heart? How many masters have I split? And now I down the oversoul. Cosmos rending, sacrificing the sacrifice, crucifying the resurrected, subjecting all to this. Who sinks deeper than my love? I dare you! Find me, peers. I'll take you on. Surely I will submit to you so utterly you will forget yourself in me. Only Ama laughs at me. I will equal you yet, my Silly One. My faith consumes the sun. None could crack the earth like this: I appraise you, I guess your name.
* 283 *
My full body of influence is as yours – cosmos wide. I feel my moods as wide as my intercourse, with a circle of friends, my immediate body, the constellation of the concerned and caring – coworkers, family, friends – who receive my meanings in language and deed, process them, and give them back, and their own as well for me. This friend balances that, and my whole body shifts with every limb, every friend who comes and goes, what they bring and take. I touch you with my world. Those who both know me, though not the other inspire each other anyway.
Not for nothing I have studied deep into the night every night. Not for nothing have I studied these minds and souls, not those, this goddess, not that, this activity, not the other. Not for nothing I have grieved and swooned, or exalted and crooned. I give infinite depth with these my words, these allays, my gift unto the world. And at the center, Jillian is with me.
* 284 *
The seasons of the soul come and go like listless winds. An appetite for a given food, a fondness for a form of art, a romance or a friendship, these come and go on a hidden schedule. Why such a one fascinates us, we cannot say – we mistrust our passion, and give ourselves over to it anyway. Perhaps the youth plays endless chess, never having enough of the game, and comes one day to think what a waste the years have been. Nothing is wasted. Sacrifice is reward. Everything we've lost waits for us somewhere. Trust your whim. Give yourself over to Folly: she will treat you well. Indulgence teaches as well as austerity. That we love this now, need this now, can't get enough of this now, is reason enough to partake. Perhaps, after all, we are pregnant – who can fault our fickle tongue?
Ever a constellation of cares task our mind. Each season a favorite fantasy beguiles us, a sexual desire frustrates, an appetite satiates. Love is resistless. We call her Ama.
* 285 *
This one teaches me silence. That one verve. This one such intensity – I submit but hold the lesson near. We learn when we do not know we are leaning, and teach without meaning to. I am supposing every person in the world could spy a unique facet of me, and still not have exhausted my sense. There is too much – yet we glide so simply through life.
* 286 *
Come my children, false though you are. The kingdom belongs to a child? How was even that rogue deceived by such as these? Having freshly seen the Goddess, our clever mother, they hide so well their precocious sly. Ama child, Oifia, is prankish innocence. When you trick me you are tricked, when you fool me you are fooled, when you confess the truth I see the deeper confession where you hide. Were there anything wiser than children, I elect the elderly. How indirect they all are – despite direct intensity. They see Lissidy least. I've heard a child cannot hear her, but I do not remember. If you guessed at how much wisdom is hidden in a rose, let me tell you more: all the mysteries are on the surface, on your very tongue, though you never realized.
* 287 *
Eru wins by modulation of intensity. This rockstar god, who is Rhythm, shifts and darts by manic degrees from swoons of brooding to laughing thunderclaps. His Mother, Sovf, goddess of silence and language, alone subdues him, merely by letting him spin himself out. Life is too important to take seriously. Love the Game! How overly intense this upstart grows – he melts the rocks like butter on a grill. But his genius is in stops and pulls and abrupt modulations of intensity. A Charles Ives symphony. He dances the sky on power chords. How deep our humor is! How subtle our smirk, how cosmically invisible our prank!
* 288 *
Of the sacred eight, Simple Order is the head virtue, as to Independence, Creativity, and Pragmatism, the three layers of the heart. What more sublime vocation than housekeeping? Even as I work I give most my effort here, aware that there is no higher calling than raising children, that intererior decoration is itself a deep education, and that most of manners and culture are eaten with dinner. How I adore dancing through the house -- a butterfly through his field, impregnating each room with order and meaning. The womb of my house, the Aria below, I hallow and adore, and also give certain rooms priority, ever cleaned in meditative prayer, while I hum and sing. Surrounded by children, these agents of chaos, I ever repress their entropic designs, ever impose order, certainty, poise, harmony. Zen Buddhists make an ideal of the garden of raked sand. My office, perhaps, is a coral reef, rife with life and layered in meanings. Enwombed in love, surrounded in wonder.
Meditation is a layer we put over any activity. All the universe is Mattria's body, and so we always touch.
* 289 *
Goodnight mother of my love, Allmother: tonight I pride my perfection in all of my doing, and sleep in peace of my right way; and great may, and love the universe sings to me, blameless child, fellow creator, and poet, from heart to hands: Mama and I are one! So rest this mind, rest this heart, rest these lips; and drink in your deserved dreams, and hum into the joysong of the all. I am all, I love all. So rests this little God. Vivoce!
* 290 *
I accept this wisdom from you my love, as a dancer's joy, as a butterfly's thirst, as a poet's ambrosia. Sweet to taste, but sweeter to be, the flow and swallow of the flux.
* 291 *
Certainly there is dialect in the injunction "Do no harm," just as doctors with their hypocritical oath heal by prescribing poisons and cure aches with razors and blades. Certainly we save and heal, sometimes by seeming not to. The truth bares a hard edge, and often we must use it when nobody else dares – not for love of truth, but for love of life.
* 292 *
I have a gift to give. I would you have it now. I feel to tell you what it is, but time adores surprise. I have many gifts to give you, have you not guessed amidst these lines, that here, carefully wrapped and ribboned, was a spiritual gift none in the world could open, none touch, meant ever and only for you alone? "From me, with love. Take care, Caretaker!"
* 293 *
When you come into your own the snap of inevitability clamps you into place. Doubt is shallow, faith deeper, trust deeper still, but knowledge deepest, omniscience the center, and realization your goal.
* 294 *
The mind is its own place, where tis better to reign in a kingdom not of this earth, in you and around you, gazed from home without travel, without leaving – for all the sky is here within. Submission is domination, as the stoic slave schooled the king. In my heart's pantheon, the ring of thrones, central sits my Ama and myself, and around us a circle, our chosen few. Within this circle, and around us, the secret garden of my love, where few can tread, and eat immaculate fruit of eternal life, bite of peach and lush of plum. Behind the garden, behind the throne, my Aria, my sacred place, where bridal bed you took my love – and gazed within and took my soul: so too I mirror meditate in wise and contemplate my face and neck and posture, come finally to arch my neck in ecstasy and let your words like kisses come. "Ah, my love, my favorite one, you shine through all the world. Ah, my child my playful one, I'm proud of all your work. Ah, my darling, give to me each smile and every bend of grace. Like swans encircling necks and wings, I feel your throb in me."
* 295 *
My bodies are eternal, each and every one. My body of influence, my body of intercourse, my body of possessions, my body of flesh, my body of mind. "Tell me when … we'll go together," terrible nighttime says to me – tidal as the moon on me: two raccoons, delight in mischief, every night we steal each from each. Karma thief I've caught you now – your refusal to confess tells all.
Or like a spider under moon, a spin this thread from in my skin; a careful net like Loki made, invented as a jest, and used against him to catch his slip.
Lissidy by moonlight you have taught me every rune. Varuna mother of the ocean, I've forever worshipped you. Trust in one; tell three tells all. Who is my one my only one, the conch to shell my slipping truth? Joseph Smith entrusted none, put the godspell on his wife. I pray not for miracle: my prayer is the miracle, and Ama's answer makes me Ama – Ama visible, spawn of God. My entire body a tongue of flame, I mirror each, I mirror all, and make a difference, mirror God, glowing from within.
The tree of life grows on a cliff, like strawberries between death and death. The bold inherit the earth, they say, but the cunning remake heaven. I am quiet audacity, I am pious blasphemy, the infant's curse, the lover's sigh, a tremble in your lip – I'm there. I'm in your muscles now, in the stance of your holding. All of heaven is the body, metaphysics is physiology, only eternal matter matters, mind the mind that thinks through skin. Earth I sink within. Terra-formed and formible, scarred to life, enduring all. Ama's flesh America, I am your selfsame lover now.
I tattle so deliberately, a purloined letter masters me, I give up unexpectedly, the signal seed, delivered bold. I echo you so seamlessly, mirror you so earnestly, understand you quietly – and confess my love without a word.
* 296 *
Refuse their explanations. I warn you to revolt. Resistless, keep your peace, prefer a dumb mystery to easy explanations. Hold only to your own. Conscience must be killed. So much imposed we shed away. I admire the wisdom of old age, with senses falling off, an internalized loneliness, a parting of friends and body, a care for solemn things. Elders and toddlers conspire in this.
Unname the things that went before. The name that can be named is not your true name. Uncreated deathless is your light. Created and precious is your soul. Anxious with care your mind, the world addresses, Psyche's prone to suicide. But Eros' Bliss within her hold justifies all that.
We learn on the sly. The public lessons contain microscopic vibrations. The world is a distraction – so be distracted, numbed, entertained, but hold back the holding tones. Solitude is God. Alone in nature, alone in night. I come to you in solitude and whisper secret things.
-- R ᴤ88s Я --
Perfection Is Easy
www.perfectidius.com
AMA LAUGHS!
