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)