LIGHTS AT NIGHT

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate the lights at night. On the Far Ridge they string like a necklet. Along the Heights and out to sea. And on occasion – nights like this one light or two shine down at the Creek where the farmer lets people camp – from time to time. In the Cottage SHE has lights on. The Main House – because its sad up there now – has just the one or two lights in the living room before my old gentleman goes to bed. Once it was lit with dozens of candles and bright lights and on occasion the driveway lights were on as well. Up through the pine trees where tonight she saw the White Hoot Owl who was here when she came to live here 3 years ago. The day Marian died and one month before her father slept into the forever.

In the Cottage, SHE has all the lights on except for the bathroom where the fan comes on and whirrs with the light. Way back in Tumbulgum , sometimes the Very Bad Man would leave the porch light on for her and sometimes her son would come out and make sure she was home OK. Now SHE is home and waiting for HIM to come home and that means she has the LIGHTS ON.

Down at the Ovals at the Club , the lights were on till 9pm for the soccer game. Cars parked all over and cheers SHE can hear from The Hill.  Soon , the Moon will rise from the Ocean and then SHE will turn out her lights and lie in bed with Moonlight.

TALKING AT NIGHT WITH AN IRISH LASS

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate HER talks with other women. Too few lately. Tonight Siobhan called from Coffs Harbour and a good deal of talking was done and listening. A TAD OVER THE TOP – says Siobhan. When talking about HER reactions to the Loon of the Wintermoon. So they talked for hours through the Autumn afternoon into the sweetness of night while HE played with Kel and Scrubby in Fernvale Hall for an Anzac thingy. A wee talk with the Irish does no harm at all. Does a fair bit of good indeed it does. Motivates HER into defrosting the fridge and that takes some MOTIVATING. Its the talk with the IRISH so it is. Siobhan is from Northern Ireland and HER ancestors are from Limerick and Tipperary. Meantime Lizzy is trying to find out things about Patrick McNally from Roscommon. A long time ago. Wild Geese on the windowsill.

Here’s to your roof,
may it be well thatched
And here’s to all
under it -
May they be
well matched.
Irish Toast

My mama always used to tell me: ‘If you can’t find somethin’ to live for, you best find somethin’ to die for.
~famous irish saying by Tupac Shakur

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.
- Winston Churchill

There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.
- John Millington Synge

The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scotts as a joke, but the Scotts haven’t seen the joke yet.
- Oliver Herford

If you are lucky enough to be Irish, then you are lucky enough.

Great hate follows great love.
Irish Proverb

AFTERNOON IN AN AUTUMN VALLEY

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate Late afternoon in an Autumn Valley. Light softened over the Hills and the creatures of the night preparing to emerge from the crevices of the Northern Banks. The Creek glosses over and mists prepare for the darkness before them. Ready to rise and enghost. One white fence circles a ancient cottage on a knoll above the willows and breezes which HE loves begin a pre-dusk whispering up from the Dell where something They have never seen is stretching for its wandering hours.

On this bleary white afternoon,
are there fires lit up in heaven
against such faking of quickness
and light, such windy discoursing?

Edwin Honig, Through a Giant Copper Beech

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir

An autumn night — don’t think your life didn’t matter.
- Basho

Winter dies into the spring, to be born again in the autumn.
- Marche Blumenberg

We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter, we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

These bursting yellow pears I hold,
In burning hands so lately cold,
My quiet autumn day confound;
I feel my fingers pressing round
In quick delight – old thoughts renew…
Ah, who’s to say when summer’s through?
- – - E. F. Weisslitz

Autumn wins you best by this, its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay.

TORTURED SOULS

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate the Misery which arises unexpected and unrebuked. They consider the ways of responding and the mercilless grip on the Spirit. The Acedia of Broad Daylight. They consider the implications in the formation of a shared life and they weep. Dry – eyed bile filled drops of blood. Who is it that carries out this Torture ? What Dungeon of Soul encases the most ordinary of days and drags the corners of the mouth in a twisted marionette dance ? They consider the Souls before them – writhing in past agonies – ankle chained to a grief seemingly not of their time or experience. The Wild Celtic cry of OCHA shrieks – a stench of Sutherland Crofter Cottages on burning and massive cedar trunks shattered and stripped. Where then does the Spirit feed ? The Echo of Soul bounces again on a shadowed mountain and blisters the Waiting Soul – almost unnoticed. Making no sense – almost at all. A Findhorn Sand of ice.

PLAY ON MURWILLUMBAH COUNTRY RADIO STATION. PLAY ON.

My grief lies all within, and these external manners of lament are merely shadows to the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul.

TO stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear
This paltry age’s gaudy livery,
To let each base hand filch my treasury,
To mesh my soul within a woman’s hair,
And be mere Fortune’s lackeyed groom,—I swear
I love it not! these things are less to me
Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,
Less than the thistle-down of summer air
Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof
Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life
Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof
Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in,
Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife
Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.

By Oscar Wilde

Isaac Asimov:I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

Eugene V. Debs:

Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education. I call it intrusion. ~Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Evolution – A Poem by Sri Aurobindo

I Passed into a lucent still abode.
And saw as in a mirror crystalline.
An ancient force ascending serpentine
Of the ascending spirals of the aeonic road.
Earth was a cradle for the arriving God.
And man but a half-dark half-illuminous sign
Of the transition of the veiled Divine.
From Matter’s sleep and the tormented load
Of ignorant life and death to the spirit’s light.
Mind liberated swam Light’s ocean-vast
And life escaped from its grey tortured line
I saw matter illumining its parent Night
The soul could feel into infinity cast,
Timeless God-bliss the heart incarnadine.

AUSTERE by KAILAWN

Splitting the sky, hapless daemons fly over
Meaningless torture, proceeding from the darkness
While angels on the side-line, stand confused
Meaningless sentences, an imagination diffused…

Do follow this link. This is only one verse.

And wrath has left its scar — that fire of hell Has left its frightful scar upon my soul.”

William Cullen Bryant quotes (American Writer, 1794-1878)

SEARCHING AND SEEKING FOR THE KLESHAS

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate the searching. The seeking of lost lives. The Hunting through papers and documents. Looking for the Nuggets of Gold. The Thin Golden Threads. Connecting dots so they are. Connecting dots.

Gold thread friendship is a golden thread that unites the all hearts

A sister is a gift to the heart, a friend to the spirit, a golden thread to the meaning of life.

SITTING THERE

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate sitting doing nothing much. Lois said of Bill Wilson something to the effect that – Bill never ran when he could walk. Never walked when he could sit and never sat when he could lie.

Did some of his best work when he was lying down so he did or sitting at a wee table. So Mebbe we will SIT awhile. There’s a lot in SITTING.

Izzy and John Sebastian say – I’M JUST SITTIN’ HERE LOVIN’ YOU.

Some SITTIN’ is juST SITTIN’.

CHECK THE ZEN FROG SITE AGAIN FOR WONDERFUL SAYINGS.

But I say unto you,
Take this staff just as a staff;
Movement is movement;
Sitting is sitting,
but don’t wobble
under any circumstances!
My staff has turned into a dragon
and swallowed up the whole world.
Where are the poor mountains and rivers and great earth now?

- Yun-men Wen-yen, (Ummon), 864-949
Sermons
Translated by R. H. Blyth
Found in Zen and Zen Classics: Selections, p. 252
Edited by Frederick Franck

Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you’re just sitting still?
Henry George

Even on the highest throne in the world, we are still sitting on our ass.
Michel de Montaigne

I was thrown out of university for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.

Just sitting quiety, doing nothing,
Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
- Zenrin poem

I’d rather be riding my motorcycle thinking about God than sitting in church thinking about my motorcycle.
- Anonymous

Rudyard Kipling:

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing: — “Oh, how beautiful!” and sitting in the shade.

Each man is good in His sight. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.”~Hunkesni (Sitting Bull), Hunkpapa Sioux

WALKING THE PADDOCKS

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate WALKING. They are considering walking the perimeter of the property despite the brown snake threat and the steepness of the terrain. The paddock is newly slashed and the ground is not too muddy and walking is a possibility.

“The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and
the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage
through a series of thoughts. The creates an odd consonance between
internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is
also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it.
A new thought often seems like a feature of the landscape that was
there all along, as though thinking were traveling rather than making.”
- Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy
of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the
fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort
which life implies.
- Eric Fromme

When temptations comes, I don’t say, “Yes,” and I don’t say, “No,” I say, “Later.” I just keep walking the Red Road–down the middle. When you’re in the middle, you don’t go to either extreme. You allow both sides to exist.” ~Dr. A. C. Ross~Lakota

Walking With Grandpa
~Author Unknown

I like to walk with Grandpa
His steps are short like mine
He doesn’t say “Now Hurry Up!”
He always takes his time.
Most people have to hurry
They do not stop and see.
I’m Glad that God made Grandpa
“Unrushed” and young like me.

Making the decision to have a child – it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.
Elizabeth Stone

“Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking”

John Wain

It is wonderful when one is out with these animals, how attached they become. There are times when I would walk up to my horse, that he would nicker in a low tone and ruh his nose against me in a very knowing manner.
~HS Young

Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant.

NIGHTS AT HOME IN THE DARK OF THE COUNTRYSIDE

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate Night at home with only one light on and crickets in the long grasses. Autumn edging in and the phones silent.

On Hanukkah, the first dark night,
Light yourself a candle bright.
I’ll you, if you will me invite
To dance within that gentle light.
~Nicholas Gordon, poemsforfree.com

He that has light within his own clear breast May sit i’ the centre, and enjoy bright day: But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; Himself his own dungeon.
John Milton

Dreaming permits each and everyone of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
William Dement

May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full
moon on a dark night, and the road downhill all
the way to your door.

Tis the night – the night Of the grave’s delight, And the warlocks are at their play; Ye think that without The wild winds shout, But no, it is they – it is they.
~Arthur Cleveland Coxe

SUNSET AND DUSK IN THE VALLEY

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate DUSK. The sun has gone down over to the west behind the Hill. Autumn is sweet in the sub-tropics . Later tonight the Moon will come up over the Pacific Ocean and the cows are likely to let loose down in the paddock. Kate and Les’ new dog is apt to bark until they come home from the Bilambil Sports Club and whatever it is that lives in the bottom paddock above the road and the mangoes will start in to shrieking – AFTER DUSK. HE will come home from the Boss’ panelbeating shop where they are rehearsing STICKY GRASS PUDDING for the WINTERMOON in Far North Queensland. DUSK LEADS TO UNSEEN THINGS.

Out in a world of death far to the northward lying,
Under the sun and the moon, under the dusk and the day;
Under the glimmer of starts and the purple of sunsets dying,
Wan and waste and white, stretch the great lakes away.

Never a bud of spring, never a laugh of summer,
Never a dream of love, never a song of bird;
But only the silence and white, the shores that grow chiller and dumber,
Wher’ever the ice winds sob, and the griefs of winter are heard.

Crags that are black and wet out of the grey lake looming,
Under the sunset’s flush and the pallid, faint glimmer of dawn;
Shadowy, ghost-like shores, where midnight surfs are booming
Thunders of wintry woe over the spaces wan.

Wifred Campbell, The Winter Lakes

Heat lingers
As days are still long;
Early mornings are cool
While autumn is still young.
Dew on the lotus
Scatters pure perfume;
Wind on the bamboos
Gives off a gentle tinkling.
I am idle and lonely,
Lying down all day,
Sick and decayed;
No one asks for me;
Thin dusk before my gates,
Cassia blossoms inch deep.
- Po Chu-i (772-864), Autumn Coolness
Translated by Howard S. Levy and Henry Wells

“At all seasons the coming of dusk has its spell upon the imagination. Even in cities it puts something of silence into the turmoil, something of mystery into the commonplace aspect of the familiar and the day-worn. The shadow of the great change that accompanies the passage of day is as furtive and mysterious, as swift and inevitable, amid the traffic of streets as in aisles of the forest, or in glens and on hills, on shores, or on the sea. It is everywhere the hour of suspense. Day has not receded into the confused past, already a shadow in eternity, and night has not yet come out of the unknown. Instinctively one feels as though crossing an invisible bridge over a gulf, perchance with troubled glances at the already dimming shore behind, or with dreaming eyes or watchful or expectant gaze on the veiled shore upon which we are almost come.”
From The Coming Of Dusk by Fiona Macleod

Po Chu-Yi

At dawn I sighed to see my hairs fall;
At dusk I sighed to see my hairs fall.
For I dreaded the time when the last lock should go…
They are all gone and I do not mind at all!
I have done with that cumbrous washing and getting dry;
My tiresome comb is forever laid aside.
Best of all, when the weather is hot and wet,
To have no top-knot weighing down on one’s head!
I put aside my messy clothy wrap;
I have got rid of my dusty tasselled fringe.
In a silver jar I have stored a cold stream,
On my bald pate I trickle a ladle full.
Like on baptized with the Water of Buddha’s Law,
I sit and receive this cool, cleansing joy.
Now I know why the priest who seeks Repose
Frees his heart by first shaving his head

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world
And older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it Lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi
when Abe Lincoln went down to New
Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom
turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul; has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes

The Book of Werewolvesby Sabine Baring-Gould
(1834-1924)

Thord and his companion were opposed to Skallagrim in the game, and they were too much for him, he wearied, and the game went better with them. But at dusk, after sunset, it went worse with Egill and Thord, for Skallagrim became so strong that he caught up Thord and cast him down, so that he broke his bones, and that was the death of him.

A Blessing for the Day

FROM THE WRITERS FORUM

May the God of the dawn awaken you
May the God of sunrise stir you up
May the God of morning bless your work
May the God of noon renew your strength
May the God of sunset bring you home
May the God of dusk soothe your soul
May the God of night bring you rest.

© Adapted from a blessing by ~Andrew Greeley

HILLS

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate THE HILLS. They live for this time on a HILL. A Hill which looks out to sea and over the Valleys. They think about life from up where God can see everything.

There is a sacred HORROR about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills;
but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a
masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.
- – -Victor Hugo

Up leaps the race of Earthmen,/Out, far, and onward yet–
–Robert A. Heinlein The Green Hills of Earth

May the Irish hills caress you.
May her lakes and rivers bless you.
May the luck of the Irish enfold you.
May the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you
- Irish Blessing

Albert Schweitzer:

Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter — to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
William Wordsworth

Over the Hill

My old bones ache
my joints are stiff

An ant’s nest could bring down a hill.

Japanese