The Library of Congress
*
So, a quiet day at home. Retrenching. Wound-licking, but only for a little while. Took the dog out to Lone Palm for a walk on the cliffs in the brilliant sunshine and cold wind and the scrubbed-world cleanliness feeling of the day after a storm.
Big white clouds in a blue sky. Andrew Wyeth scrub grasses and wind-tossed sparrows in them. Fat sea lions sunning on the wet black rocks and back-lit cormorants spreading their wings to dry above them.
Great crashing waves. A blue Heron that takes off lazily when the dog gets too close, four flaps of his wide, angular wings and he's fifty yards away. A pair of egrets up on the hill in weddingdress white, unconcerned.
My own dark shadow on the ground in front of me, keeping a kind of company.
It is the best thing to do when your soul needs feeding.
Get thee to the sea.
*
My aunt was telling me about her practice. She lives on a Gompa up in the Northern California woods. She's spent years in silent retreat, wrestling with her own dark adversaries.
Anyway, she's doing this practice where she meditates on this woman with a necklace of skulls, a bowl made from the top of a human skull filled with sloshing red blood. Her fierce face is black and blue and she's standing on a dead body, her ego. Big sword in her other hand, raised behind her head, ready to strike.
Ugly, fierce, deadly, monstrous.
Inside her heart is a small, beautiful goddess.
Buddha nature.
Her energy is awareness.
See it. Know it. Watch it all.
*
It's not very smarmy.
I like it.
A lot.
*
I must have her tell me more about it.
*
Although my little ship of state got rocked pretty good the last few days, the leaks she sprung are small and I have already bailed out the bilge and picked up the books and foodstuffs that got strewn about the cabin and I've unbattened the hatches and I'm going topside now to hoist the main and get her back on course.
The goddamn storms are half the reason we go to sea, you know.
***
Namaste.
I am grateful to you for coming by and saying what you think.
May you be happy and at peace.
***
PS-
When my wife gets home, I'm taking her to the Library of Congress.
It's my favorite library.
*
posted by tearful dishwasher at 2:22 PM
8 Comments:
oh, fat sealions
and meditation on skulls with blood!
I had a student, a wonderful guy, maybe a kid, not that old, with a blue mohawk, or maybe it was green, who did fierce work with barbed wire and goth photos taken in a cemetery, mounted with red cloth and hung in the university library...he wrestled and wrestled with demons, that sweet soul, drugs and drink and all sorts of things, and became a monk where he wrestles, but maybe not so much.... he was on facebook for a while, which was a pleasure, but now he's off... he was/is so wonderful...
and so are you and yours...
peace...
a sea lion baby was a new detail in a basically reoccurring dream i had again last night.
i like reading about them today in your real life, and i've never dreamed one before ever.
a coincidence always makes me smile.
melissa-
thanks for stopping by and sharing.
dottie bones!
baby sea lions in your dreams? must be a good omen. I love my dream world myself, it's as bizarre as it could be, and it almost always sports a celebrity cameo. Last night it was Christopher Walken.
He wanted to sell me a cook book that you used to cook your enemies with.
Ha.
Heavy wet snow here. I've strung colored lights around the window frames to keep the dark away. For now: no demons.
Thanks for sea, sky, wind, sea lions, dog!
Mim
Storm away Captain!
I get my doses of sea from you and Radish, it's wonderful.
Christopher Walken!
*SNORK*
*SNORK*
*SNORK*
I want my book in the Library of Congress and I want to check it out from that librarian up top. She kind of looks like Reb Livingston around the face part.
xo
She does look a little like Reb, huh?
Radish and Deirdre, you guys make it worth sticking around for.
yrs-
tearful
O love libraries. My favourite one in Sydney is at Customs House
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