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Friday 5 February 2010

February 5 (for A.)


.

File:Common grass jewel Im IMG 7022.jpg



As Jung said often enough, we can go with another only as far as we have gone with ourselves. This means also that we can go with ourselves only as far as we have gone with another. -- James Hillman

Call the world if you Please "The vale of Soul-making". I say 'Soul making' Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence -- There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions -- but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. -- John Keats

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere. -- John Donne




My heart in pieces like the bits

Of traffic lost in the blue

Rain confused I roar off into

To learn how to build a ladder

With air in my lungs again

To be with you in that region

Where you are






File:Candleburning.jpg





Psyche (Leptosia nina, common grass jewel), Kolkata, West Bengal, India: photo by J.M. Garg, 2006
Candle wick burning: photo by Matthew Bowden, 2004

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

To be there must be a beautiful place. I am still searching. Show me. Give me a clue.
Beautifully said, you.So few words and so many emotions conjured up within, as my eyes caress your words.

Hello Thomas!

TC said...

Hello SarahA,

I believe you carry your own flame within, it shines out, as some few souls do.

You have shown me. You have given me clues.

Thomas

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

beautiful poem Tom, in that little room that is an everywhere. big storm here last night, took out tree that took out power/phone (phone still out, why?), big white clouds drifting across the blue above the ridge now. . . .

2.5

first grey light in cloud above blackness
of ridge, white half moon above branches
in foreground, sound of wave in channel

shadow on the table, colors
event perhaps suggest

tends to see as abstraction,
of flatness, illusion

grey whiteness of sky across from point,
whiteness of gull perched on GROIN sign

TC said...

Steve,

"shadow on the table/colors/event/abstraction/illusion"

The reflective passages embedded within the daily visual captures, and the abiding continuity of fidelity to the landscapes/seascapes/skyscapes enclosing those meditations, are beginning to take on (for me anyway) a curious spiritual aspect, something perhaps resembling (dare I speak of that whereof I do not know) prayer.

The common grass jewel is also Psyche, and the candle flame, in Vedic systems of thought, likewise represents soul.

As to that storm last night, wow. I got caught out in it, on foot as always (perforce); the downtown streets forming breezeways channeled the terrific wind gusts coming out of the south, driving the horizontal torrents into one's face... my umbrella blew inside out and had to be left for wreckage, yet idiotically I struggled on, through the racket of street signs and trashcans banging loose against concrete, noticing as I went that I was the only pedestrian on an otherwise usually crowded stretch of avenue, all others huddled for shelter under commercial arcades... crazy.

aylatan said...

hey tom,

love the hillman quote, my favorite soul anti-establishment psychologist. this is evelyn. haven't been to y due to family in town. please meet yeung in front of y tomorrow night at 8pm ish. she will drive you to my party. email me: justbeingevelyn@yahoo.com I really want you to come.
ev

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom, wowee!, saga of the streets, wind jet streaming around buildings, umbrella blown inside out ---- thanks as always for thoughts on poems.

Anonymous said...

he know his muse
and can explain her
in classic vintage

aditya said...

Such a beautiful piece to read on a morning, when you wake up smelling beer on your breath.

Every line scripted with the distinct emotion. Spliced. In to the ever so mystic soul of a structure you create.

Such a pleasure reading this one :)