Prophetic tiger at the edge of the village

In Freya's mailbox as the heat-hammer moves slowly Eastward from Okieland . . .

The National Organization for Women was founded on this date in 1966 Washington, D.C. NOW is the largest women’s rights organization in the United States, with 550 chapters in all 50 states.

On Wednesday, the Washington-based National Geographic magazine that has surveyed science and the natural world for 135 years reached another difficult passage when it laid off all of its last remaining staff writers. From here on out it's all freelancers and editors. FYI: Disney owns NatGeoMag.

Artists are prophets. They say what can’t be said in ways that can be heard. They create music, sing, rap, dance, paint, sculpt, and write it in dramas. They are the forerunners for the community. . .A lot that comes out of artists is not coming from them. It’s coming through them. Art is an expression of Spirit. – Richard Rohr

Today is the 112th anniversary of Czeslaw Milosz's birth. The internationally recognized Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat, was born on this date in 1911 Szetejnie, Lithuania. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in 2004.

Arts Poetica?

. . . . In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

. . . . There was a time when only wise books were read
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.

. . . . What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
– Czeslaw Milosz

light over darkness

In Thor's mailbox this morning ahead of forecasted record heat . . .

. . . at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter – Rilke

Hope is a light that darkness can never contain. – Steven Charleston, from Ladder to the Light: An Indigenous Elder's Meditations on Hope and Courage. Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2021 – posted today in Meditations at the Center for Action and Contemplation. The “Trail of tears” ended in March of 1839 near where I now live in Okieland.

“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.”-- Daniel Gilbert

Today is the 123rd anniversary of French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's birth. The author of The Little Prince was born on this day in 1900 Lyon, France.

On this day in 1613, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre burned to the ground. The thatched roof caught on fire after a theatrical cannon misfired during a production of Henry VIII.

And,. Frank Loesser was born today in 1920 New York City. The composer, librettist, and lyricist wrote “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” in 1944, which he sold to MGM in 1948 for the film Neptune’s Daughter. The song won the Academy Award and serves as a reminder of the potential for better things to come under the 109º heat index forecasted for today in TulseyTown of Okieland.

Hope is the thing with feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

– Emily Dickenson

Dis-membering synchronicity

It's Odin's day and the mailbox opened onto record heat here in Okieland . . .

It's the 311th anniversary of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's birth. The libertarian philosopher was born on this day in 1712 Geneva.

In the arts, the free expression of the creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules – Rousseau

“The opposite of remember is not forget. It’s dis-membered. We’re all chopped up.” – Alan Watts.

Another term for co-incidence is synchronicity. Multiple co-incidences are also synchronicties. Everything is co-incidentally synchronous. Like you, reading these co-incident words across an illusion of a time/space frame referent. The referent is contained in each alphabetical symbol, which, gathered in the present instance, refer to an experience beyond the phenomenal.

Mystical experiences point to a transformation in consciousness from the feeling of being a separate self to a sensation of inter-being, the feeling of being inextricably woven into a mutually interdependent web of life. They serve as a re-membering. . .It’s virtually impossible to write about mysticism because the entirety of it is non-representational. On a good day, the best poets give us a glimpse of the mystic as it transcends symbols and words. – Jeff Krasno

When the Animals Come

When the animals come to us,

asking for our help,

will we know what they are saying?

When the plants speak to us

in their delicate, beautiful language,

will we be able to answer them?

When the planet herself

sings to us in our dreams,

will we be able to wake ourselves,

and act?

– Gary Lawless, First Sight of Land. © Blackberry Books, 1990.